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A LOST JEWEL 



HARRIET PRESCOTT SPOFFORD 

K 

AUTHOR OF “HESTER STANLEY AT ST. MARK’S 1 ’ ETC. 





BOSTON MDCCCXCI 

LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 

10 MILK STREET NEXT “ THE OLD SOUTH MEETING-HOUSE ” 
NEW YORK CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM 
718 AND 720 BROADWAY 






Copyright, 1890, by Lee and Shepard 


A U Rights Reserved 


> 


/ 



AUTHOR’S NOTE. 


When Marnie went to school at Waterways, in 
Hester Stanley’s second year there, she was im¬ 
mensely attracted by Hester’s great black eyes, which 
made her think of Lucia’s eyes; and the two girls 
were presently very confidential, although no one 
could take Marcia’s place with Hester. It was in 
one of Hester’s Christmas vacations spent with Marcia 
that she told Rafe the story of Lucia, as Marnie 
had told it to her. The wandering life with the 
padrone, which was so terrible to Lucia, was very 
alluring to Rafe, bound to his lounge the year round; 
and the old Sicilian palace on the slope of Mount 
Etna, from which Lucia writes to Marnie, with the sea 
below it, the far rocks bathed in purple glows behind 
it, and the wide soft sky above it, gave him much 
matter for thought in connection with the possibility 
of lava-streams, and the danger from brigands. And 
as these little people have a great deal to say to me 
when I go into child-land, that is how I came to 
hear about it all. But if Grandmother Maurice ever 
comes across this little book, I hope she will not think 
that I have talked too much. 


S 



* . 













































































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• 4 















- • 









A LOST JEWEL 


CHAPTER I 

Where in the world could it have gone ? And 
how in the world did it happen ? The children’s 
mother, Mrs. Maurice, said she never could for¬ 
give herself for such carelessness. And their 
Grandmother Maurice said she had certainly 
warned her often enough not to wash her hands 
with that ring on, if she did not want to wash 
the stone loose from the setting. And Mr. 
Maurice himself said it was hardly worth while 
to talk about how its loss might have been 
hindered; the thing to do was to find it now it 
was lost. And all the children had exclaimed 
twenty times over, “We will find it, mamma!” 
And the Witch of Endor’s mate had cried 
“Hooroah!” The Witch of Endor’s mate was 



6 A LOST JEWEL 

one of the two tame ravens that Thomas was 
teaching to talk. 

I said all the children had exclaimed that 
they would find it ; but I ought not to have 
said that all of them did. Lucia was sitting in 
the hammock, and she said nothing. She had 
been searching with the others in the morning, 
and now had given it up; for she had never 
been known to find anything with those large 
soft Italian eyes of hers, and it was hardly 
likely that she would be the one to find this 
stone, bright as it was — the single stone of 
the ring that the children’s father gave their 
mother on the beautiful day when Baby was 
born. 

The mother had been so pleased with the 
gift, too, they could all remember. She had said 
that she would never have it off her finger 
long. And since then she had worn it every¬ 
where ; sometimes happening to remember to 
slip it in her pocket when she went gardening, 
with her bulbs and seeds and trowel; and 
sometimes forgetting to do so when she went 
to feed her pet hens. 


A LOST JEWEL 


7 

There was always something odd about the 
ring to Lucia. It had a strange way of spark¬ 
ling up in her eyes when the mother was correct¬ 
ing her about anything, and she had more than 
once caught herself thinking that the price of 
such a stone would keep poor old Catarina from 
hunger and cold this many a day — poor old 
Catarina, who had done her little best to be 
kind to the child when she came back to the 
garret at night, tired out from her long tramp 
with the tambourine and the padrone. 

For Lucia was not the own sister of Larry, 
and Marnie, and Rose, and Jo, and little Kate 
and Baby. But their father and mother finding 
her once, footsore and weary and sick almost to 
death, by the roadside, with the padrone and 
his hand-organ and his monkey, had — yes, had 
actually bought her of the cruel organ-grinder. 
And they had taken her home, and nursed 
and fed and dressed her, and made her one 
of their own. 

Everybody felt as if Lucia must be very 
grateful; Grandmother Maurice often told her 
she ought to be ; and she certainly seemed tQ 


8 


A LOST JEWEL 


be. But for all that, I can imagine that now 
and then her memory might be sore over poor 
old Catarina ; and if she longed to give Catarina^ 
some of the good things of life of which she 
herself now had so many, rest, and ease, and 
food, and clothes, and friends, and pleasant after- * 
noons in the sun — Catarina was so fond of the 
sun — why, it was but natural. 

Yet it was a little more than two years now 
— that is, it was three summers — since Lucia 
had become one of the children ; and her new 
parents used to hope that the old life was 
fading out of her remembrance. They would 
have been sure of that, but for her saying, one 
day .when the children were telling what they 
wanted most in the world: “Money! As much 
money as mamma’s great ring cost, to go and 
send my poor old Catarina back to her own land 
where I know she longs to be ! ” The chil¬ 
dren did not know that any one heard them, 
but Larry in his grief remembered afterwards 
the smile with which his father and mother 
looked at each other as she said it. 

But just now they were thinking of nothing but 


A LOST JEWEL 


9 


the lost stone. “ I have spent the whole half day 
in hunting for it,” said Mrs. Maurice. “ And so 
have Marnie and Jane and Thomas; and they 
have brought me a select assortment of bits of 
broken glass, to see if they were what I had lost. 
I would rather have lost everything else I have. 
There is not a corner of the house that has not 
been searched. I can’t think where I lost it.” 

“It is possible,” said Mr. Maurice, “that it has 
not been lost at all; but that it has been stolen.” 

“ Oh, you don’t think so ! ” cried Mrs. Maurice, 
stopping suddenly, and turning towards him, as if 
he could prevent such a thing, even after it was 
done — she always felt as if her husband could do 
anything. 

“ I didn’t say I thought so. I said it was pos¬ 
sible. And if it was stolen, the question arises, 
By whom ? ” 

“ By nobody ! ” cried Mrs. Maurice. “ I would 
rather lose a thousand rings than think we had a 
thief among us ! ” 

Mr. Maurice laughed. “ That is so exactly like 
you, Esther,” he said. “As if it depended on 
what you preferred ! ” 


10 


A LOST JEWEL 


“But just think, John dear,” said his wife, stop¬ 
ping again in her walk, and spreading her hands 
open before her, as if their being empty showed 
that everybody else’s hands were empty too, “ the 
servants have been with us all these years, and 
their honesty has been tried repeatedly. And of 
course the children are not to be suspected. And 
there hasn’t been a tramp along since those two ”— 

“Nobody, in fact, left to suspect, except the ra¬ 
vens,” laughed her husband. “ But still the stone 
is gone. And if you have lost it, of course it is 
somewhere to be found. And if you haven’t lost 
it, then who took it ? ” 

And the Witch of Endor’s mate, hopping along 
sedately in the path, looked up in his face, and 
said, “Jo! ” 

“ Aha ! ” said grandmother. 

And so they went up and down the garden 
walks, turning over loose leaves and pebbles with 
the tips of their toes; and Argus, the superb pea¬ 
cock, went along after them, now and then stopping 
to spread his tail, or running out of his way for 
the grasshopper that Mrs. Argus, the pea-hen, had 
failed to snap up; and Lady Thornton, the white 


A LOST JEWEL 


II 


turkey, with her dozen sons and daughters, con¬ 
scious of some commotion, had spread her snowy 
wings and was flying with her fluffy family up the 
hill-field behind the house, like a light cloud just 
above the grass. And Lucia had left swinging in 
her hammock, and was sitting on the top step of 
the piazza, busy with a pencil and paper; and the 
children were running hither and thither in the 
search down the garden paths ; and grandmother 
was feeling in her big pocket for her spectacle- 
case, grumbling in an undertone about the care¬ 
lessness of young people, and saying what people 
did with their rings in her day, and that, for her 
part, she should have the crops of every fowl on 
the place opened; and the ravens were clucking 
in the syringa bush, the hens were cackling, the 
chickens peeping, the big Brahma was splitting 
the air with his challenge to every other rooster 
alive; old Benbow himself was all astir with 
echoes, a carriage was stopping at the gate, the 
stone was not to be found, and that was all there 
was about it! 


12 


A LOST JEWEL 


CHAPTER II 

The children lived in a large old-fashioned house, 
on the side of Benbow Mountain; that is, they 
lived there in the summer. Behind the gardens, 
and the orchard and the smooth hill-field, a forest 
covered the mountain almost to the top; and 
below them stretched the lovely intervale of 
meadow-land with the elm-fringed river running 
through it. A brook, fed by springs far up the 
mountain-side, danced out of the woods on its way 
down to the river; here and there it was dammed, 
on its shallow course, in order to turn the wheels 
of saw-mills in the woods ; and here and there it 
was diverted into sluices where the sawed boards 
floated along to the shute nearly as fast as bubbles 
float over .a fall. 

It can be supposed that there was plenty of 
pleasure to be had in such a place ; sometimes in 
the woods, and sometimes on the river, and, if 
they stayed there till quite late, as once in a while 


A LOST JEWEL 


13 


they did, with the sharp sleds, the snow-shoes, the 
skates, and the great roaring fires inside. And 
then Larry made the most wonderful sheaves of 
wheat and stooks of corn out of the new snow; 
and once he made a great snow angel —he really 
did — with wings on its shoulders ; and he poured 
water over it to freeze at night, and in the morning 
it shone in the sunlight almost as if it were a real 
spirit just from heaven. But Larry was always 
doing things of that kind ; he made vases of pot¬ 
ter’s clay, and a curious sort of picture of grand¬ 
mother, that looked, they said, as if grandmother’s 
face had been pressed into the clay on the other 
side. When they were back in town again and at 
their lessons, all the mountain life used to seem a 
dream, as Marnie said, shaking her yellow curls. 

What a family of yellow curls they were, by 
the way ! You never could tell, by seeing the 
head of any one of them in mischief, which one 
of them the particular offender was. To a stran¬ 
ger’s eye, Lucia’s dark tresses were in singular 
contrast. But they were dear little yellow locks ! 
Mrs. Maurice could well remember a time when 
they had seemed the most beautiful sight she had 


14 


A LOST JEWEL 


ever seen in all the world. They were on little 
Jo’s head, that time. And he had been lost 
for two days. It was in the city. He had been 
playing with the other children in the square, 
and Jane had only looked away a moment, asking 
the policeman an innocent question, as she said, — 
nobody ever thought to ask her what question, — 
and Jo was gone. In after years that was noth¬ 
ing so uncommon. Word was left at the central 
station, within the half-hour, and Mr. Maurice 
was summoned, and all the neighborhood turned 
out to help him seek the child, and Mrs. Maurice 
was nearly beside herself, and a telegram was 
sent to grandmother in the mountains, as if she 
could do anything up there; yet nothing was 
seen or heard of Jo. Nobody could play, of 
course; Larry could not even whittle ; the chil¬ 
dren stayed close together, wondering where Jo 
could be, what he was doing, if anybody was 
hurting him, if he had anything to eat, and some¬ 
times crying a little when they caught sight of 
their half-distracted mother. It was very hard, 
when night came and nobody knew where dear 
little Jo was, and they looked out into the great 


A LOST JEWEL 


15 


darkness, and Jane was sniffling, and everything 
was just as though there were a funeral in the 
house. “ I’m glad Grandmother Maurice isn’t 
here,” said Marnie, “ to be saying ‘ I told you 
so.’ ” 

“It wouldn’t hurt any one if she did,” said 
Larry. “ Would it, Jane ? ” 

“ I’d ruther she slapped me face, so I would! ” 
said Jane with a fresh snivel. “And that she 
did ! ” 

“ Slap your face, Jane ! ” 

“Tell me so. Many’s the time. An’ me going 
on hadeless ! ” And Jane could say no more. 

But next day they had been able to talk fur¬ 
ther about the affair. Larry was sure that Jo 
had gone down on the wharves, and aboard a 
ship, and gone to sleep; and the ship had sailed 
with him, and he would come home, some time, a 
great sea-captain, with a ship of his own and a 
figure-head on it,—only Larry should make him 
a finer figure-head then. And Jane was sure she 
should never see Jo again, for the dear child had 
come to the side of her bed in her dream, “ and 
all that, you know,” she added mysteriously to 


i6 


A LOST JEWEL 


Maria. And Marnie was sure a wicked old beg¬ 
gar-woman had him, and would stain his face, 
and take him out with her, begging coppers on 
the street; and she and Rose went on a tour of 
inspection of all the old beggar women they could 
find, and came very near getting lost themselves, 
to say nothing of their almost losing little Kate. 

Mrs. Maurice, herself, with a burly policeman 
on each side of her, her face as white and set as 
marble, had visited a dozen dens where it seemed 
as if — could any people live there — it might 
be such as could kidnap children, if there are 
any such. There was one squalid place which 
she saw every time she shut her eyes for months. 
It was up all but countless flights of dark and 
broken stairs, — a garret black with smoke and 
grime and age; and in one corner of it (other fami¬ 
lies in other corners, where men were quarrelling, 
women scolding, children screaming) was an old 
woman roasting chestnuts over a little charcoal 
furnace, and rubbing the paws of a sick monkey 
with an ointment. She was a strange-looking 
person, with a step that might have belonged to 
a fisherwoman, once used to boats and sails and 


A LOST JEWEL 


17 


ropes; she had a clear blue glittering eye, and 
dark red hair with no gray in it; but her tawny 
face was only a mass of lines and wrinkles and fur¬ 
rows, like a piece of scorched leather. She kept her 
back turned upon the other people; it was plain 
to see that she despised them; she had a couple of 
old quilts strung half about her corner to separate 
herself from them. On the heap of straw beside 
her lay a long, thin, black-haired child, in the 
sleep of such profound fatigue that it was almost 
impossible to wake her. She did awake, though, 
for one second, looked up in Mrs. Maurice’s face 
with a smile breaking over her own and showing 
her little white teeth, like a ray of light touching 
dark water, and fell back again into dead slum¬ 
ber at once. She was not Jo. Jo was not there. 
And overcome with the thought of the possibil¬ 
ity of such a thing, with the smells and noises, 
and dirt, and all her own weariness, Mrs. Maurice 
reeled over fainting; and she might have fallen to 
the floor but for the stout arms of the old Italian 
woman, who looked so little like any Italian Mrs. 
Maurice had ever seen before. It was on step¬ 
ping into the open air — full of foreboding and 


i8 


A LOST JEWEL 


horror as to the future of Jo, if any such people 
had found him and should be able to keep him 
and bring him up to lead their dreadful life — 
that a glimpse crossed her eyes of a procession of 
colored children going up the hill, tricked out in 
rags of every tint, with paper caps and flags, sing¬ 
ing and shouting, and laughing and blowing their 
horns, and always marching, and at the head of 
them a little dirty creature with a shock of yellow 
curls. 

Perhaps the policemen thought she was a crazy 
woman, as she broke away from them and ran up 
the hill. Perhaps they had seen mothers before. 
They knew, at any rate, that she had found Jo ; 
and they went home with the two quite as if it 
were they themselves that had found him. 

And Jo was not only petted to within an inch of 
his life, but had a great deal to tell of eating crusts 
given at back-doors, and of sleeping in empty dry- 
goods boxes on sidewalks, and was regarded by 
the other children as one who had seen life — that 
is, until Lucia came. 

It was only two months afterward, just before 
removing for the summer to their mountain home, 


A LOST JEWEL 


19 


that Mr. and Mrs. Maurice, driving along a country 
lane some dozen miles from the city, had found 
the little girl with her tambourine, lying beside 
the hedge, unable to go on. “ Oh ! ” cried Mrs. 
Maurice, after they had stopped and asked the 
man about her — the man speaking almost no 
English at all — and had done what they could for 
her, “ when I remember how I felt at the thought 
of our Jo’s having to live the life of such children, 
I don’t see why we should not save this child from 
such a life! And we can afford it — can’t we, 
John ? ” 

“ We can afford it,” said her husband doubtfully. 
“ But do you think it wise to bring a child from 
the streets, with all the familiarity with evil which 
that means, among our innocent little people ?” 

“ Perhaps she has no such familiarity. She does 
not look like that. She looks like one of those that 
evil never touches. See how unlike the man she 
is, the white lily! She is a stolen child, John ! 
Perhaps she belongs to princes and palaces.” 

“ Nonsense, nonsense, Esther ! ” 

“And some mother’s heart is aching for her! 
O John, I must take her home and be a mother to 


20 


A LOST JEWEL 


her, too ! She brings the blue Italian seas and 
skies right into our dull weather. And such a 
beautiful child ! My heart warms to her so ” — 

“Would it if she were cross-eyed and ugly ?” 

“ O John ! Indeed you must let me”— 

“ She is a lovely child,” said Mr. Maurice, look¬ 
ing down at her. 

“And needing care so much,” said his wife 
pleadingly. 

“We might-try it,” said Mr. Maurice. “If we 
can make the fellow understand.” 

“ O John, you are so good, you are always so 
good! I knew you would ! And now you must 
bargain with the man. If she were his child, you 
see, he wouldn’t let us have her.” 

And the end of it all was that the fellow, who 
was not averse to parting with a sick child that 
was only an incumbrance now, provided he could 
make a handsome sum .of money by the means, 
was made to understand, the sight of bills and coin 
helping him. Lucia was taken into the phaeton, 
and driven home very slowly, arriving there after 
the children were in bed; and then she was bathed 
and combed and put away to bed — the doctor 


A LOST JEWEL 


21 


saying she needed little but rest and food, a con¬ 
tented mind, and the total change she was to have. 

When Lucia awoke in the middle of the night, 
Mrs. Maurice, in her white dressing-gown, with 
her long fair hair falling about her, was standing 
beside the bed. The child held up her thin hands 
and began to speak in a foreign tongue, and Mrs. 
Maurice bent a little nearer, if possibly she might 
make out her meaning. And then the child 
stopped, and, as if it were English that should be 
spoken to all superiors, and not her rude mixture 
of several Italian dialects, she murmured, “ Oh, if 
you are, if you are indeed the Holy Mother come 
to take me, I am quite ready. And I have tried 
to be good. You may not think so — but I have 
tried — so hard. And I am so tired. Only, let 
somebody be kind to Sora Catarina.” And all at 
once then she paused, and sprang half up in 
the bed. “ Oh, oh! ” she exclaimed in quite a 
different voice. “ I have seen the madame before. 
I must have been dreaming. It is the lady that 
came to our place looking for her boy, Sora Cata¬ 
rina says. And she caught you in her arms when 
you fell.” Something stopped her here; she would 


22 


A LOST JEWEL 


not add that Sora Catarina had wondered why the 
lady should faint because of the place. “ If she had 
been a Contessa, now. But just a woman of the 
people, as all the women are here! ” Sora Catarina 
had said. 

“ And the Sora Catarina is your mother ? ” 
asked Mrs. Maurice. 

“ Oh, no, indeed, indeed ! It seems to me I had 
a mother once/’ said the child, with a far-off look 
in her great dark eyes. “ But it is all so dim. It 
is like a picture, and I try to look — and there is 
nothing there. Sometimes the smell of a flower 
makes me almost remember. And she is so gentle 
to me — I should die if there were no Catarina. 
When the padrone beats me” — 

“ Oh, you poor child ! ” cried Mrs. Maurice, on 
her knees beside the bed, and taking the dark little 
head on her breast. “He shall never beat you 
again ! You are going to stay here with me, and 
be one of my own children.” And then she won¬ 
dered at hearing no response, and waited a moment 
and glanced down, and saw that Lucia had fainted 
dead away with joy. 

Mrs. Maurice called her husband ; and when she 


A LOST JEWEL 


23 


saw the tears shining in his eyes too, she knew 
that he also had adopted the little stranger into 
his heart. 

Mrs. Maurice sent Jane down to White’s, early 
in the morning, for some garments that would do 
for the present for this other daughter, and at the 
breakfast-table she asked the children how they 
would like a new sister. 

“A new sister?” said Jo, his face one daub of 
egg and sirup. “ There’s girls enough in this 
family. They’re always telling you to ” — 

“Wipe off your chin, Jo,” said Larry. “I 
suppose it will be ever so long before she will be 
any good to a feller,” he added. 

“ O mamma ! ” cried Marnie and Rose, in one 
breath. “It will be better than the forty-seven- 
dollar doll in Schwarz’s ! ” For they were in the 
habit of taking their mamma to that emporium, 
and walking round and round the cases, never ask¬ 
ing for a thing, but content to have her see the 
lovely treasures with them; only, perhaps, now 
and again suggesting that little Kate would like 
the Sister-of-Charity doll, or the bent-wood furni¬ 
ture, or whatever took their own fancy particu¬ 
larly. 


24 


A LOST JEWEL 


“Very well, then,” said their mamma, on this 
morning, “when you have breakfasted you can 
come with me. Finish your milk, though, first. 
And, Jo, you must wash your face.” 

“O mamma!” they cried again in a surprised 
chorus. For they were accustomed to a different 
state of things when new sisters and brothers 
came. And they ran into the hall, tiptoeing 
up-stairs after their mother, and holding their 
breath, and whispering to one another. 

“ I’m going to keep her in my lap all this fore¬ 
noon,” said Marnie. 

“ Oh, it isn’t fair ! Let me hold her just a little 
bit! ” whispered Rose. 

“You may this afternoon.” 

“Well, I can kiss her while she is on your 
knee, can’t I ? O Marnie, won’t she be a little 
dear ? ” 

“She’s nothing but a girl-baby!” said Jo, 
stumping up the stairs behind them. 

“And I’m so glad she’s a girl. We can play 
house with her, and have her for a real truly baby, 
you know,” said Rose. 

And then their mother opened the door, and 


A LOST JEWEL 


25 


they looked about bewildered; for there was 
nobody there but Lucia in one corner of the sofa, 
a ruffled wrapper folded about her like a white 
rose, and her long curling dark hair tied back with 
a bit of blush-rose ribbon. 

“ This is your new sister,” said the mother. 
“ And, Lucia, these are your brothers and sisters, 
Larry, and Marnie, and Rose, and Jo, and — where 
is little Kate ? ” And Lucia looked at them a 
moment; and there swept over her the recollection 
of a morning when she had tossed the tambourine 
outside the area gate, and the padrone had turned 
the organ, and the monkey had leaped about, 
chattering, hither and thither, and a lot of children, 
with their yellow locks, hung on the railing, and 
one of them — it was certainly this dear Marnie 
herself — had run into the house and come out 
with a piece of sugar-gingerbread and a cup of 
milk for her; and she had so longed to be one of 
the happy children who did not know how happy 
they were, and now — And the tears burst out 
and streamed over her face, and she opened her 
arms wide to all these brothers and sisters, with 
an almost unconscious gesture, and they fell 


26 


A LOST JEWEL 


upon her, laughing, and crying, and exclaiming 
in a breath. And no one knew what to say 
first. 

“ Opy the door! ” cried an imperious voice 
outside. “ Opy the door ! W’en I say opy the 
door, opy the door! ” And then little Kate came 
upon the scene. “ Is you a weally baby ? ” she 
asked, coming up and looking Lucia over quietly. 
“ Does you suck you shum ? ” 

“ See here now,” cried Larry, “ it is a great sight 
better than having them born babies ! ” 

“ Perhaps she won’t always be telling me my 
face is dirty,” said Jo. 

“ Oh,” cried Marnie and Rose in one breath 
again, “ it is perfectly lovely ! You dear papa and 
mamma, to give us such a sister! You dear 
sister! ” 

“You mustn’t ky, it isn’t pwoper! Jane will 
shake you if you ky. I dess she wants her bottle,” 
said little Kate, turning to her mother, and accept¬ 
ing the fact of the new baby in all good faith. “ I 
shink you is a mighty big baby,” she added. “ Did 
you turn in a basket ? ” 

“In the basket-phaeton,” said their mother. 


A LOST JEWEL 27 

“ And this is her birthday. I think she will have 
another bed in your room, Mamie.” 

“ What a cold papa has ! ” exclaimed Rose ; for 
Mr. Maurice, who had stood in the door, was using 
his pocket-handkerchief tremendously. 

“ Now,” said mamma, “you see one travels some 
way to come into a new family, and one gets very 
tired. And so I think we must leave Lucia till she 
is quite rested.” And so they did; Marnie, how¬ 
ever, stealing back, after a while, to sit and hold 
the new sister’s hand in silence; while down¬ 
stairs, Larry averred again that it was much the 
pleasanter way to have sisters born grown-up, and 
Rose said that now she should be perfectly happy 
if they only had a real baby come, a real live 
velvet baby. 

As soon as Lucia was able, they all went up to 
the mountain-house, and there, before the summer 
was over, the real live velvet baby came, and that 
was Baby himself. And, at the time the stone 
was lost out of mamma’s ring, he could just get 
about the place without a nurse to bar the way, 
quarrel with the ravens, make friends with the 
hens and chickens, tease and love Lucia and 


2 8 


A LOST JEWEL 


Marnie by turns, and rule Rose and the rest of 
the house with a rod of iron. All the rest, 
I mean, except Grandmother Maurice. Nobody, 
as you will see, ruled her with any sort of a 
rod. 


/ 


A LOST JEWEL 


2 9 


CHAPTER III 

Perhaps it was just as well that nobody could 
rule Grandmother Maurice with any sort of rod; 
for it might have interfered with her excellent rul¬ 
ing of the house. She stayed the year round in 
the mountain home, and relieved her daughter-in- 
law of a great deal of care, and often brought her 
strong common-sense to bear on the charities in 
which her son and his wife interested themselves. 
“If it wasn’t for me,” she would say, “you would 
have the house full of the lame and the lazy and 
them that won’t work. That wouldn’t do your 
children any good. And charity begins at 
home.” 

“And sometimes it stays there,” muttered Jo, 
who had a good deal of warfare with his grand¬ 
mother (perhaps because they were so much 
alike), and for which she would not have him 
corrected, preferring to manage him in her own 
way. 


30 


A LOST JEWEL 


“ Charity begins at home ! ” she said. “ And 
here’s this little Italian beggar that nobody 
knows — ” And words failed Grandmother Mau¬ 
rice to say what she thought of this last act of 
charity. She could only keep her eyes wide 
open, that the foreign child should do her own 
immaculate little folks no harm. At least, if they 
were not all of them immaculate, one of them 
was, in her eyes — Larry could do no wrong. 

“ Grandmother’s heart is a small one, I know,” 
said Jo. “There’s only room for Larry in it.” 

“Your grandmother! She is the best woman 
in the world. O Jo, Jo,” said his mother on her 
sofa, “ do you forget who took care of papa when 
he was a little boy, sat up with him nights when 
he was sick, kissed him when he was hurt ” — 

“ She wasn’t grandmother then,” said Jo. 

“Who darns your stockings now, Jo?” asked 
hi§ mother. “Who mends your knickerbock¬ 
ers ?” 

“ She always scolds first,” grumbled Jo. “And 
I’d rather wear them torn.” 

“ I dare say,” laughed his mother. “Well, who 
makes the ginger-snaps, and gives you all you 


A LOST JEWEL 31 

want, and puts up the marmalade you love so 
much ? ” 

“H’m. I suppose she does.” 

“ She calls us a horde of children, though,” 
said Marnie. 

“ Perhaps you behave like a horde. Grand¬ 
mother says she is getting old. She loves 
quiet.” 

“Well, we’re young. We don’t love quiet,” 
said Jo, who certainly loved his own way. “ She’s 
always saying that if we vex her so she’ll go to 
the End of the World and jump off. I wonder 
what it’s like at the End of the World, and how 
you go ? Lucia says it must be round the moun¬ 
tain and through the wood, and down the turn¬ 
pike. And Lucia ought to know—she’s travelled 
so much.” 

An hour later, and partly in consequence of a 
fresh disagreement with grandmother, who had 
just sent the Witch of Endor and her mate flying, 
had declined to have a nest made for a sick hen 
on the hearth of her bedroom, and had resisted the 
establishment of the cat with her five new kittens 
in a bureau-drawer there, Jo and Rose started for 


32 A LOST JEWEL 

the spot concerning which they had been wonder¬ 
ing. 

It was a lovely morning, when—Jo armed with 
a stout stick, and Rose carrying Louisina — the 
children stole away. Some round soft clouds 
rolled along the horizon, but the sky was blue 
overhead, the sun shone, the birds sang, the bees 
hummed, and the paths were bright with wild- 
flowers, which they picked, as they went along 
hand in hand on their way to the End of the 
World. “ Just hear the birds,” said Jo. “ There’s 
one now, in the old cedar, says, 4 Where are they 
going, where are they going, where are they going 
to f ’ And there’s a big fellow somewhere else 
says, ‘ Ender the world, ender the world, ender 
the wurruld ! ’ I guess he’s an Irish bird.” 

“And there’s a bobolink down there singing, 
‘ Children, children, children, quick, quick, quick, 
I’m going too! ’ And now he’s laughing at us. 
Did you know these birds are all people ? Lucia 
says so. They’re put into bird-shapes by wicked 
witches” — 

“ Like the Witch of Endor’s mate ? I say — is 
he people ? ” stopping to pick some fire-lilies. 


A LOST JEWEL 


33 


“ Why, of course so ! Can’t he talk right out ! 
You can go backward and throw water on them, 
and say Abracadabra! ” said Rose, rolling up 
her eyes for the big word, “ and they will change 
right back into persons ” — 

“Into real witches ! You’d better let them be.” 

“He says ‘Jo,’ you know, and ‘ Hooroah,’ and 
‘Ma.’ Really, I mean. Not like the birds.” 

“The birds say it really,” said Jo, plucking a 
stem of strawberries, and eating them every one. 

“No, they don’t really. You might just as well 
say Louisina talked really.” 

“ Yes, they do, really.” 

“ Before I’d be a pig ! ” said Rose, stamping 
her foot. “You ate every strawberry yourself, 
just like Larry.” 

■ “You would, if you could have got them.” 

“ Children ! Children ! Children ! ” called the 
bobolink. 

And then they looked at each other and 
laughed. “ I guess we came near quarrelling,” 
said Rose. “And perhaps the birds do really 
talk.” And so they rambled on, and one hour 
passed and another. 


34 


A LOST JEWEL 


“ I wish we had brought some buttered biscuit, 
don’t you?” said Rose. “I’m awfully hungry, 
and awfully thirsty, and awfully warm.” 

“ I wish we had some of grandmother’s ginger- 
snaps,” said Jo, longingly. 

“ Perhaps we had better not go the whole way 
to-day,” suggested Rose. 

“ If we turned round, we should be lost, I 
guess,” said Jo, trudging on. 

“ Perhaps we are lost now,” said Rose. And 
she began to cry a little, thinking of her mother 
and the not-yet-month-old baby. And Jo sat 
down on a stone beside her and cried too, and 
made a good deal worse noise about it. 

“ Men shouldn’t cry,” said Rose. And as she 
spoke, there came rumbling along behind them a 
sound of wheels. And in a moment or two they 
were overtaken by a wagon with grandmother sit¬ 
ting upright in it; and then the poor little dusty, 
tired, perspiring souls were glad ’enough to climb 
up beside her, helped by no very gentle hand, and 
dropping their vast vegetable accumulation of 
flowers and roots and mosses as they tlimbed. 

“ I don’t know that you deserve it,” said grand- 


A LOST JEWEL 


35 


mother. “ But if people only had what they 
deserved in this world, they would fare slimly. 
However, there was nobody else to come for you 
— and I can’t have your mother worried; she’s 
all the daughter I have— Sit still, Jo ! And as 
it was I that you heard talking of the End of the 
World” — 

“ I think you would have come for us, grand¬ 
mother, any way, if you knew how our feet 
ached,” said Rose. “ Oh, I am just so tired! I 
suppose Lucia used to feel this way every day.” 

“ Oh, — Lucia ! ” 

“ Grandmother,” said Rose, with dignity, “ if 
you talk so, I shall get out and walk.” 

“Let’s see you do it!” said grandmother. And 
old Abdallah flew along at a good gait as she 
touched him with the whip. 

“ How did you know where we were, grand¬ 
mother ? ” asked Jo, sleepily. 

“ Do you suppose I don’t know the way to the 
End of the World ? ” returned his grandmother. 
“ Or to the End of the Rainbow, either, for that 
matter,” for just then they came out of the thick 
trees, and saw a shower had fallen over the 


36 A LOST JEWEL 

intervale, which was spanned by an immense 
rainbow. 

“To the End of the Rainbow ? ” said Jo, prick¬ 
ing up his ears, and not at all asleep now. “That 
is just where Rose and I were going when we 
came back. Do you know the way, grandmother ? 
The shortest way ? Lucia says there is a pot of 
gold buried there ” — 

“ Very well. We’ll put a stop to Lucia’s 
nonsense about that — now!” said grandmother. 
And she left the road at the first turning, and 
went up a steep lane that led presently into the 
wood which seemed to crown the mountain. 

They drove on in silence some way, the chil¬ 
dren a little frightened, although they knew noth¬ 
ing could happen where grandmother was ; but 
not quite prepared in their own minds, to go to 
the End of the Rainbow just yet. When they 
stopped at the charcoal-burners’, and grandmother, 
who knew everybody in the mountains, told the 
men she wanted three of their horses and two of 
themselves to go to the top of old Benbow, the 
affair was so entirely taken out of their hands 
that they felt as if they were going to receive 


A LOST JEWEL 


3 7 


some sort of punishment. But they plucked up 
their spirits at sight of the bundle of goodies 
that grandmother brought up from the depths of 
her capacious pocket — a huge pocket that she 
tied on under her gown every morning, and that 
seemed to hold everything; sometimes it was 
apples, sometimes books, once it had been a 
kitten, and once a pail of maple sirup ! As Joe 
ate his doughnut, he whispered to Rose that he 
guessed it was one of grandmother’s larks. 

I ought to tell you that Grandmother Maurice 
was not a very old lady at all. She was but eigh¬ 
teen years older than their father was. When “ all 
went right and nothing wrong,” Grandmother 
Maurice used to say that she felt as young as ever 
she did ; but when things “put her about,” as Jane 
expressed it, she took refuge in being an old 
woman. Just now, mounted on her horse, and 
with a guide at the head of each of the horses on 
which the children sat, she looked as if she felt 
twenty-five. “I’m an old mountaineer,” she said 
to one of the guides, “and I mean the children 
shall be hill-people, too, and get all the health and 
Strength there is in them/’ 


38 


A LOST JEWEL 


“ They sing about the strength of the hills in 
church, Sundays,” said Rose. 

“That’s another sort of strength,” said grand¬ 
mother. 

So up they went a path safe enough, but very 
crooked, and always steep ; grandmother had only 
taken the guides along because she knew mamma 
would scream if she heard of their going without 
them. Sometimes, as they went, they could look 
over a shelf of rock, although they were not near 
the edge, where an eagle sweeping below seemed 
no bigger than a swallow; and then Rose would 
utter a succession of little shrieks. Sometimes 
their horses splashed across a shallow brook, and 
Jo would want to get off and wade. At last they 
came out on a surprising place above the woods, 
where only some huckleberry and juniper bushes 
straggled along the way. “I’m slipping off, 
behind,” Ros'e would cry. “ O grandmother, I 
am ! And my horse wants to eat all the bushes! ” 

“ No, you’re not,” said her grandmother. “ Go 
along. Isn’t Mr. Stearns leading your horse? 
What’s the matter, then ? Go along. I came up 
here when I was your age.” 


A LOST JEWEL 


39 


And now it seemed as if they were climbing 
straight up a face of bare red rock into the sky, 
and hundreds of sharp broken fragments lay 
about them, as if piled there by giants at rough 
play. 

“I guess this is the End of the World,” said Jo. 

“ Here,” said grandmother, off her own horse, 
“we’ll let the animals rest.” 

Below them, now, the wood which they had 
always thought such an interminable forest was 
but a dark streak of color; the river, the valley, 
the farm, had disappeared; there was nothing but 
a world of hills huddled in every way, hundreds 
and hundreds of hills. 

“ Where did they all come from?” said Jo, when 
he recovered his breath. “ I didn’t know there 
were any others but ours, and the other two, and 
those ever so far off that hold up the sky.” 

“ Was this the way it looked before God made 
the world, grandmother ? ” asked Rose. 

“ It is beautiful enough to have looked this way 
when He finished it,” she answered. “‘Where 
wast thou when I laid the foundations of the 
earth” said grandmother, half to herself, “‘when. 


40 


A LOST JEWEL 


the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of 
God shouted for joy ?*” 

“ Is that in the Bible, grandmother ? ” asked 
Rose timidly. 

“Job,” said grandmother. “There is a great 
deal about mountains in the Bible. Mount 
Lebanon and its cedars, Mount Ararat, you 
remember ”— 

“ I know about Mount Ararat! ” cried Jo. 

“And Mount Sinai,” said Rose. 

“And Mount Carmel, where Elijah and the 
priests of Baal prayed for rain — some time you 
shall hear the story of that told in music — mist 
and rain and spouting brooks, all music.” 

“ And the mountain out of which the bears 
came when the children mocked Elisha,” said Jo, 
looking around apprehensively, for he knew he had 
been impudent in his thoughts to his grand¬ 
mother that day. 

“ They came out of the wood,” said Rose ; “ I 
have heard Jane say so ” — which settled it. 

“And Mount Horeb, where the prophet heard 
the still small voice,” said grandmother. “And 
there wa§ the mountain where Jesus was tempted 


A LOST JEWEL 


41 


and shown the kingdoms of the earth, and angels 
came and ministered unto him.” 

“ Any more, grandmother ? ” asked Jo. 

“Yes; Mount Hermon, where the dew distils.” 

“ All the dew ? ” 

“ The dew of Hermon. I shall begin to think 
you are simple, Jo. Then the mountain that the 
king of Syria surrounded with his soldiers, where 
the boy with Elisha was so afraid, and the prophet 
said, ‘ Fear not , those that be with us are more 
than they that be with them ,’ and the Lord opened 
the eyes of the boy, and behold the mountain was 
full of horses and chariots of fire round about 
Elisha. I should like to have seen that — the 
great, prancing, champing horses, like the horse 
in Job, the archangels holding them, the wheels, 
the fire, the hosts of heaven ” — 

“ So should I! ” said Jo. 

“ I should have been more afraid,” said Rose. 

“ Oh, yes, there is nothing like mountains,” 
said grandmother. “And we never have a white, 
whirling, howling storm here in winter, that I 
don’t remember, ‘ Which by His strength setteth 
fast the mountains , being girded with power! ” 


42 


A LOST JEWEL 


The little hand of Rose crept into her grand¬ 
mother’s. She felt as if they were really receiv¬ 
ing her confidences. And then they looked 
down at the world underneath in silence for 
a while. Indeed it was beautiful. Around, below, 
beyond them, nothing but hills, the tops of hills, 
like waves, a sea of hills, dyed in all the deep, 
soft shades of green and purple, melting again 
into a dull blue mist like the bloom on a plum; 
and over these the shadows of clouds were sail¬ 
ing ; and sunbeams were striking through them in 
lanes of light. 

“There is a shower falling,” said Grandmother 
Maurice, pointing into the distance where they 
could see the long slanting purple and silver lines. 
“Now we shall have the rainbow.” And it came 
springing out of the gloom like a flying thing, and 
arching over a great cloud in such vivid tints of 
violet, and blue, and tender green, and gold, 
orange, and deep crimson, as they thought they 
had never seen before, and never could again, 
unless such jewels were melted together as the 
stone in mamma’s new beautiful ring. 

“ Which end will you go for, Jo?” asked his 


A LOST JEWEL 


43 


grandmother. “ Now look below you again.” 
And as their eyes were now trained to finding 
rainbows, they saw a multitude of the lovely 
things sparkling, making, melting, fading, darting 
out again, from hill to hill, along the slopes of 
grass, along the shadows of forests, in the show¬ 
ers, in the falling and the fallen rain, in the 
dews, in the foam of brooks, the mist of gorges, 
everywhere below them and about them. 

“ Rainbows under our feet instead of over our 
heads,” cried Rose. “ Rainbows in the grass ! ” 

“ At the end of which one of them is the pot of 
gold, Jo? ” said his grandmother to the bewildered 
and delighted little lad. 

“ It can’t be all of them,” said Jo. “And there 
are so many,” he added discontentedly, “that I 
suppose it can’t be any of them.”' 

“ So many rainbows, so many pots of gold ! It 
wouldn’t be worth while to do much of any other 
work than hunt for the ends of rainbows, if 
Lucia’s nonsense were true. No, Jo, all the pots 
of gold we get in this world we must work for. 
So we’ll go along down, I think.” 

And they mounted their horses again, and 


44 


A LOST JEWEL 


picked their way slowly down, Rose every mo¬ 
ment or two screaming that she was sliding off 
before, now; but the charcoal-burner held her on, 
and just as it seemed as if there were nothing for 
the horse to do but to jump out into the open 
universe, the man would lead him round a corner 
of rock, and they would go along serenely till the 
next descent. 

“ I declare,” cried grandmother, as they drove 
into the yard at last and smelled the green-tomato 
sweetmeat that she had left on the back of the 
range, “ if those preserves are burned, I shall owe 
it all to that minx of a Lucia, who put the rain¬ 
bow’s pots of gold into your heads! ” 


A LOST JEWEL 


4S 


CHAPTER IV 

Before they came up to the mountains, Mrs. 
Maurice had several little talks with Lucia, some 
concerning the present, and the future, and one 
concerning the past. 

“You said it seemed to you as if you could 
remember your mother, Lucia,” she said. “What 
is she like when you remember her ?” 

“I don’t exactly remember,” said Lucia, with a 
look on her face as if she were trying to see into 
a great distance. “ Only, sometimes, when a 
child’s mother. kisses her, I seem to feel as if 
something had kissed me so, too, once, with soft 
hair dropping round me, and maybe flowers, flow¬ 
ers,— flowers,” said Lucia suddenly, “like those,” 
pointing to the little bunch of jasmines that Mr. 
Maurice had brought his wife that day — he 
brought her some sort of flowers every day, when 
in town. 

“And is that all ? Try to think.” 


4 6 


A LOST JEWEL 


“ Almost all,” said Lucia, speaking always 
slowly, with little waits, as if she stopped to 
choose the right word, but, with the tact her 
hard life had taught her, never uttering the 
foreign word. “ I used to try not to think. But 
it seems pleasant weather there, when I feel that 
way; and great rooms with shining floors; and 
sometimes I see a vase of flowers, taller than I 
am, that I never really saw anywhere, I think. 
And sometimes I dream of somebody, a gentle¬ 
man, and he has a bright star on his breast, and 
his eyes are dark and bright. And that is all. 
Except a church with singing in it. I think I 
should know that church; I used to go there 
with— Only just hear me talk!” cried Lucia. 

“ But once, when we were stopping — the pa¬ 
drone, and Frillo, and I” — 

“ Frillo ? ” 

“The monkey, you know, poor Frillo—when 
we were stopping to play and sing outside Emman¬ 
uel Church, and the cops — the police, please — 
were sending us off, and a bride came out, and 1 3 
was so near her I smelled the orange-blossoms, 
then it all came over me just like a veil, all over 


A LOST JEWEL 


4 7 


me — the lovely lady with the flowers in her hair, 
the gentleman with the star on his breast, the 
great room, the shining floor, the tall vase — and 
so I think there must have been orange-blossoms 
there.” 

There rose before Mrs. Maurice’s eyes the vis¬ 
ion of a Sicilian palace in its gardens on a moun¬ 
tain side, blue and silver hills behind, blue and 
silver seas below; but she wisely said nothing. 

“ And have you any idea as to how you came to 
this country ? ” she asked instead. 

“ With plenty of other children, Catarina says.” 

“ And how did you learn English so well ? ” 

“The padrone broke his stick over me if I 
spoke my own words. I was of the more use to 
speak the words here. And I asked, I listened, I 
learned anywhere. And sometimes I went to the 
church; he let Catarina take me to listen to the 
English; and it was so beautiful there — with 
music and pictures, and burning perfume — as if 
it were one’s home. But sometimes on Sunday 
I was too tired, and slept all day.” 

“ Poor child ! ” 

“And I talked to children and ladies in the 


48 


A LOST JEWEL 


yards where we went, and listened to them on the 
street, and said it over. I learned the letters on 
the signs, and asked folks. I learned to read so. 
But what I say does not sound like what Marnie 
says.” Which was true, for she spoke with an 
odd little difference, an accent that made English 
sound like another tongue, but which the children 
found delightful and tried to imitate, till Lucia 
herself outgrew it ; she always spoke with a sort 
of habit of sweet slowness. 

“Well, my love,” Mrs. Maurice said, “the best 
thing now is to try and forget — forget it all, even 
the padrone and Catarina.” 

“ Oh, I can’t forget poor Catarina! ” cried 
Lucia, clasping her little thin hands. 

“ It would be better for you, at any rate, now 
that you are in a new life, not to talk about the 
old one. And I would rather you did not speak 
of the padrone, and all that, to the children, as I 
told you once,” said Mrs. Maurice, in her sweet, 
gentle way. “ Don’t even think in the old lan¬ 
guage. Remember that now you are an Ameri¬ 
can. And if you want to make Marnie happy, 
you will let her teach you to read and write and 


A LOST JEWEL 


49 


sew, and not be disturbed should any one correct 
your grammar. You learn so easily that it will not 
take her long to teach you all she knows. And 
when she has done that, you can go to school 
with her.” 

“ Oh, is it true ? ” exclaimed Lucia. “ Oh, 
Mamie,’’ as the little twin sister came into the 
room, “ your mother says ” — 

“ Your mother,” said Mrs. Maurice. 

“ Do you — shall I — is it not bold ” — 

“To say ‘mamma’ ? If the children are to be 
your brothers and sisters, papa and I are to be 
your father and mother.” 

Lucia was very pale. “ And what ever can I do 
for you ? ” she cried. And she flung herself on 
Mrs. Maurice’s neck in a passion of tears. 

“ How much the child must have gone through 
to feel so strongly about the change! ” said Mrs. 
Maurice, afterward, to her husband. 

“ They say that such children are drugged with 
morphia, when first taken away,” said Mr. Mau¬ 
rice, “ and it stupefies them for a long while and 
hurts their memory. Infamous ! Infamous busi¬ 
ness ! Perhaps it will all come back at some time 


5o 


A LOST JEWEL 


if she lives, — all this now unremembered past. 
She is very delicate. I wrote mother that she 
would have died, certainly, had we not taken 
her.” 

But it was not long, after they were in the 
mountains, before Lucia began to feel like a child 
with the rest of the children, as ready for a romp 
as any, and leaving play half reluctantly for the 
morning hour with Marnie, although, when she 
was at her book and slate, she studied with a will. 

“ I should think,” said Marnie,“ you were afraid 
something would happen if you didn’t learn all 
there is to learn. ” 

“ Something would,” said Lucia. “ Mamma 
would be grieved.” 

“ Dear, dear ! ” said grandmother. “ So young 
and so good! ” And she stepped through the 
long window to the piazza where Rose sat reading. 

“Grandmother,” said Rose, who took a good 
deal upon herself, and assumed an equality that 
always amused her grandmother, “ what do you 
mean by that ? ” 

“ I mean that it is singular a child out of the 
gutter should be so much better and wiser than 


A LOST JEWEL 51 

your mother’s children! ” was the exasperated 
reply. 

“ Grandmother,” said Rose severely, “ Lucia 
is not out of a gutter. She is out of a garret. 
There is a great difference between a gutter and a 
garret. Would you treat Lucia so if you knew 
she was a princess in disguise ? She may be. 
Jane says so.” 

“You cock-sparrow!” said grandmother, sur¬ 
veying Rose over the top of her glasses. 

“ Do you love grandmother ? ” whispered Marnie, 
over the book they held together, back in the 
room. 

“ I try to,” answered Lucia. “ But not so well 
as Catarina.” 

And the answer sealed Lucia’s fate in that direc¬ 
tion for some time to come. For grandmother’s 
ears were like those fabled ears that could hear 
the grass growing, and she always heard what you 
didn’t want her to hear. And although Lucia 
could soon do whatever the other children could 
do, could catch almost anything on the piano, 
could draw designs on Larry’s pad that he wished 
he had done himself, could crochet sacks for Baby, 


52 


A LOST JEWEL 


could dress little Kate’s dolls, could tell them all 
no end of queer folk-lore stories that Catarina had 
told her, there was one thing she could not do, 
and that was, make much of any progress in the 
affections of grandmother — who regarded her as 
an interloper, and didn’t believe she drew one 
of the designs on Larry’s pad. “Look at the 
golden-haired little lad, gazing into the sky with 
eyes as blue as the sky, born to be an artist if ever 
any one was ! And tell me she can draw as well 
as he ! ” grandmother would say. And when she 
would have to be blind not to see Lucia with her 
charcoals sketching all that came into her head, 
on doors and blank walls, then she declared the 
child was defacing everything in the house. And 
when Lucia took papa’s gift of a box of water- 
colors, and made a wild blackberry vine creep 
along the neutral-tinted paper of Mamie’s and her 
own room, then grandmother wondered — although 
not in Lucia’s hearing — if the room bore so poor 
comparison with where she came from that she 
must needs decorate it! 

“Let mother alone,” said Mr. Maurice. “There 
are roses you can force; and they have not a 


A LOST JEWEL 


53 


breath of fragrance. And there are roses you leave 
to their own cool custom, and one day they have a 
hundred buds and are as sweet if they grew in 
the gardens of Persia. Love is a slow growth.” 

And now it was Lucia’s third summer on the 
side of old Benbow; and although Larry had far 
outstripped her in his drawing, and Marnie was as 
far ahead of her in her music, none of them 
exceeded her in love and devotion and gentle 
industry. 


54 


A LOST JEWEL 


CHAPTER V 

Marnie and Lucia had been playing a duet 
together, Marnie with the notes, and Lucia impro¬ 
vising the bass as they went along. “ Presently,” 
said Marnie, “we shall have to learn Italian. And 
you will be ahead of me there, because you will 
only have to recall it.” 

“ I don’t know as I can. Mamma wanted me 
to forget all that,” said Lucia, with half a shudder. 

“That child is too good to live,” said Grand¬ 
mother Maurice, with satirical emphasis, after she 
had passed them. “ She does what she’s told so 
well that she even forgets when she’s told ! I’ve 
known a good many children to forget when 
they’re told. But not in this way.” 

“ Don’t you remember once, ever and ever so 
long ago,” said Lucia, after she had gone by, 
“asking me if I loved grandmother? It’s queer 
— but, somehow, I don’t feel as if Grandmother 
Maurice was very fond of mef 


A LOST JEWEL 


55 


“Well,” said Marnie, somewhat embarrassed, “ I 
think she isn’t very fond, you know, of any of us 
— but Larry. He is the apple of her eye.” 

“ The apple of her eye ? ” 

Marnie laughed. “ I mean that Larry can dp 
anything with grandmother; although mamma 
says it’s wrong for me to say so.” 

“Larry does things for her,” said Lucia. “He 
makes contrivances for her with his tools. He 
clears up her shelves, he finds the things she loses, 
he puts her newspapers in order ” — 

“ They are all out of order now. I heard her 
say they were all ways of a Sunday.” 

“That’s another funny saying — well, never 
mind, let’s put them in order for her,” said 
Lucia. 

No sooner said than done, or attempted to be 
done. In two minutes they were both in grand¬ 
mother’s room, and in a whirlwind of Congrega- 
tionalists and Cultivators , and Puritan Recorders , 
and New England Farmers , scattering them in the 
wildest sort of chaos first, that they might file them 
properly by the year and week afterward. 

“ Here’s the thirteenth. And here’s the twen- 


56 A LOST JEWEL 

tieth,” said Marnie. “Now, where is the twenty- 
seventh ? ” 

“ Here,” said Lucia. “ No — this is a Recorder , 
isn’t it ? You see.” 

“This is the twelfth. And this is the fifth. 
Why, it’s hateful, isn’t it ? ” 

“ Here’s the twenty-seventh, then,” said Lucia. 

“ There, January’s done ! ” said Marnie. “ Now 
for February.” 

But it was slow work, and tiresome, all the 
more that the sunshine was so bright out-doors, 
and the children’s voices came in from the garden, 
and the Witch of Endor’s mate was perched upon 
the summer-house, uttering some unintelligible 
gabble. 

“ He’s practising,” said Lucia. “ He thinks 
he’s all alone. Hear him ! He’s trying to say, 
‘ I told you so ’ all to himself.” 

“ I ought to be practising, too. There ! I told 
you so. Mamma’s calling us down again. Oh, 
what ever shall we do ? Grandmother’ll make such 
a fuss ! I wish we hadn’t touched the papers.” 

“You go back, and I will finish here. It isn’t 
..so much matter about my practising, you know.” 


A LOST JEWEL 


57 


“.Well, I must practise, if I want to sing. And 
if I only can sing some time, just a little the way 
I heard Nilsson when mamma took me, that 
‘ Angels ever bright and fair,’ with a trumpet 
blowing it out beside me, too, and the trumpet’s 
tones and my own voice going up, up, up — oh! I 
shall feel,” said Marnie, clasping her hands and 
lifting her eyes, “ as if I was going up myself ! ” 

“ So shall I,” said Lucia, “ if I hear you, I 
know. But I can pick up my little tunes any 
time ; ” for Lucia, although she had no voice to 
speak of, took to music in general as a duck takes 
to water. But Marnie needed practice more ; and 
as she had given promise of a remarkable voice 
for singing, her mother insisted on a half-hour of 
scales every day, even if it was vacation. 

It’s mean to leave you,” said Marnie. 

“ But you must when mamma calls,” said Lucia. 
“Well, I’ll be back.” And off skipped Marnie; 
and Lucia toiled on, spelling out the dates slowly, 
and piling the newspapers together, and every 
time she heard the gabble of the Witch of 
Endor’s mate, or the laughing of Jo and Rose and 
little Kate, feeling as if her back ached worse, 


58 


A LOST JEWEL 


and she never should get through, but still keep¬ 
ing at it, when all at once there stood Grand¬ 
mother Maurice in the middle of the room. 

“ If this is not a pretty how-do-you-do ! ” was 
the exclamation. “How dare you come into my 
room and meddle with my papers, miss ? ” And 
the next instant the world was teetering on its 
axis, and her teeth were chattering, and her eyes 
were dancing, and everything was whirling madly, 
and grandmother had shaken her and set her down 
in a way that made her feel as if heaven and earth 
had come together. And the next instant Lucia’s 
hand was in the air for a blow, a retaliating blow. 
But the hand fell beside her. 

“ One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, 
nine, ten,” she repeated slowly, looking grand¬ 
mother straight in the eye. And then, as if she 
would utter the most withering words possible, 
“If you were in my country,” she said, “you 
would be only an old woman like Catarina! ” 
And she marched out of the room as if she had 
dealt a deadly blow, and left Grandmother Maurice 
thunderstruck. 

But there was no happiness for Lucia the rest 


A LOST JEWEL 


59 


of the morning. For a moment or two she hugged 
the joy of having spoken so to grandmother — 
grandmother, who queened it everywhere. And 
then Lucia heard Marnie carolling up and down 
her scales, and Jo and Rose in the garden-walks, 
and all the happy noises of sunshiny weather out¬ 
side ; and it struck her that she was in a terrible 
contrast to these innocent things, and she ran and 
hid in the big clothes-press and sobbed herself 
half sick. 

“ Catarina never struck anybody,” she sobbed. 
“And oh, to think, when I have been struck so 
much that I used to say I never would strike any¬ 
body, that I should have meant to strike — and 
papa’s mother too ! And mamma told me of my 
temper when I slapped little Kate that day ! ” 

How long ago that day of her first summer 
here seemed now! Jane had sent away the kit¬ 
tens to their watery graves, little Kate making a 
loud uproar about it, and declaring she would have 
some more immediately, and walking off in a de¬ 
termined fashion with the poor mother-cat upside 
down in her arms. It was an hour or so after¬ 
ward that they came across little Kate, down 


6o 


A LOST JEWEL 


under the barberry-hedge, sitting composedly in 
the sun, with her fat legs crossed in front of her, 
and the old white hen, that she had driven from 
her nest, dusting herself in the path near by. 

“ Me’s hatsing me’s tittens,” said little Kate, 
looking up with rosy confidence in their interest. 
And in a moment then it occurred to Lucia what 
little Kate had done. It was Lucia’s own big 
white hen — they each had their own hen — that 
had stolen her nest out here under the barberry- 
hedge, and that she had waited upon with corn 
and meal and water day after day, watching with 
parental anxiety for the chickens, and Thomas 
had said the chickens would be out that morning 
certainly, and here she was driven off her eggs, 
and little Kate in her place, and of course the 
eggs were crushed. And it was more than Lucia 
could bear, and before she had taken a second 
breath little Kate’s cheek had the mark of her 
five fingers tingling on it. 

“ Hatching your kittens, indeed ! ” cried Lucia. 
And then, overcome with consternation at her 
action, and at the roar that little Kate set up, she 
had caught the child in her arms, and suddenly 



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A LOST JEWEL 


61 


the air was full of “Cluck-cluck-clucks,” and 
“ Pip-peep-peeps,” and the old hen was back in 
triumph, leading off a round dozen of chickens. 
For little Kate’s weight had not touched the nest, 
and the chickens were just chipping the shell 
when she had taken the business in hand. 

“It's a meracle, a meracle ! ” cried Jane. But 
for all the “meracle,” little Kate was carried off 
kicking for a bath, and Lucia was left bathed in 
her own tears, presently to be taken away gently 
by mamma, and spoken with very seriously about 
the horror of indulging an evil temper, and advised 
to count ten, when angry, before doing anything 
else ; but she had not been punished. 

“And, oh, what is the use of always repenting, 
if you’re always sinning right over again ? ” 
thought Lucia in the clothes-press. “ What good 
has all my trying been ? Here, in papa’s home, 
I have struck his child, and wanted to strike his 
mother! I think my hand ought to be cut off! 
and my tongue too ! ” And her fresh sobs so 
filled the closet that she did not hear the heavy 
step approaching, till the door opened, and dark 
against the dazzle of light stood Grandmother 
Maurice. 


62 A LOST JEWEL 

Lucia cowered back still further into the 
shadow; but grandmother’s strong hand took 
hold of her and drew her out. “ My child,” said 
grandmother, “ I did very wrong. And when I 
saw what you had been trying to do for me, I 
felt ashamed of myself, and came to ask your 
pardon.” 

“ Oh, no, no, no! ” cried Lucia, feeling worse 
than ever. And she fell on her knees in her pas¬ 
sionate way, catching grandmother’s hand. “It 
is I! It is I! How can you ever forgive me ? 
You are papa’s mother” — 

“Humph!” said grandmother. “I am an old 
woman! And people usually don’t lift their 
hands against old women — or their tongues 
either. However, that’s neither here nor there. 
I did wrong. And I am sorry for it. So did 
you. One is never too old to acknowledge the 
wrong.” 

“ If you could only try to love me, grand¬ 
mother.” 

There was a wince at the word. In all these 
two years grandmother had not quite made up 
her mind to be grandmother to this waif. But 


A LOST JEWEL 63 

she lifted Lucia and smoothed her tumbled curls. 
“ Well, well, we’ll both do our best. Now you 
may come, and I will show you something.” 

And Lucia felt that she was wholly forgiven for 
what she had done, and only half forgiven for 
being Lucia. And Grandmother Maurice, feeling 
that she had done her whole duty strictly, went 
hand in hand with her through the orchard and 
the first edge of the wood to the beginning of the 
cliff. And there on a shelf of the rock, half hid¬ 
den by the ragged bough of a dead pine, was a 
strange little bundle of sticks, and inside it a 
slight, loose nest of twigs, with three brown- 
speckled bluish eggs in it. 

“ It is the Witch of Endor’s nest,” said grand¬ 
mother. “ If the children knew of it, they would 
come to look so often that they would frighten 
her, and she would leave the nest. Now that is 
your secret and mine. Let me see if I can trust 
you.” 

But if Grandmother Maurice thought any raven 
of the air was going to build its nest on old Ben- 
bow, and Jo be none the wiser for it, she reck¬ 
oned without her host. 


64 


A LOST JEWEL 


CHAPTER VI. 

What the Witch of Endor thought, when, a day 
or two after this, she saw two big blue eyes, 
under a tangled shock of yellow curls, peering 
over the side of her scrappy nest, she never said. 
But, fortunately, her mate could speak for her; 
and he came hopping along, just at that point, and 
paused; and then, as if he would make Jo wel¬ 
come to his home, or would express his sense of 
the importance of the contents of that nest, he 
surveyed Jo, with his head first on one side and 
then on that, and called out “ Hooroah ! ” and Jo 
rolled over and over down the shelf of rock and 
brambles and junipers, chuckling with laughter. 

For all that, Jo watched his chance when the 
Witch of Endor went gravely hopping and flap¬ 
ping up the garden, her mate having returned 
to his breakfast, and then he deliberately took 
one of the bluish-brown-speckled eggs out of the 
nest. 


A LOST JEWEL 


65 


He had not gone far with his naughty trophy 
before he was overtaken by Master Larry, who 
shut up his jack-knife and demanded to know 
what Jo was hiding. At first Jo thought of clap¬ 
ping the egg in his mouth — it was a goodly- 
sized mouth. But that hardly seemed the thing. 
And if he put it in any of his pockets, it would 
smash. He tried to run ; but Larry’s legs were 
longest, and he had to own up. His punishment 
was a swift one. Larry took the egg. 

“It will just make one more in my collection,” 
said Larry. “And I couldn’t get a raven’s egg 
anywhere else. And this is as good as a raven’s, 
a crow’s, and a magpie’s, all together.” 

“ I was going to put it back again, Larry, when 
I had shown it to Rose. I really was ! I wasn’t 
going to keep it. I really wasn’t! I don’t 
believe the Witch of Endor would like it.” 

“ Great I care ! ” said Larry. “/ sha’n’t put it 
back. They can’t count ” — 

“Why, of course they can. I’ve heard them.” 

“ Poh! It’s going on my string,” said Larry. 
“ I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll be fair. I’ll give 
you the wooden owl I made, or that piece of 


66 


A LOST JEWEL 


chalk I cut into an old man’s head, if you’ll let 
me have it; and if you won’t, I’ll keep it any¬ 
way ! ” 

“Grandmother will take it away from you.” 

“ Grandmother won’t know anything about it! ” 
cried Larry. “ If you tell a soul one word about 
this egg, now, you sha’n’t go with Thomas and me 
to see the eagle’s nest on the cliff.” 

This was a dreadful threat. For the climb to 
the eagle’s nest had been promised them by 
Thomas for some time, if their mother were will¬ 
ing. And Jo surrendered on the spot. “ Oh, I 
never, never will ! ” he declared. 

“ Hope you may die ? ” demanded Larry. 

“Certain true, black and blue!” answered Jo. 
And with this form of obligation the bargain was 
concluded, and then Larry carefully proceeded to 
blow the egg. 

He had just finished the operation when grand¬ 
mother was seen bearing down the path under full 
sail; that is, with her big umbrella spread. What 
was there to do ? There was no time to hide the 
thing in pocket or hat; and to hold the hands 
behind one was certain death when grandmother 


A LOST JEWEL 


67 


arrived. But Larry’s wits were quick. Up went 
the egg, spinning into the air, and where it would 
come down there was nobody to tell. 

“ What are you doing, my little lads ? ” said 
grandmother kindly ; for how could she ever speak 
otherwise to her Larry, the boy who always seemed 
to be her own one only baby over again, the image 
of the young husband who died while that baby 
was still in her arms ? 

“Oh,” answered Jo, with what he thought the 
most admirable prudence, and before Larry could 
reply, “ Nothing, grandmother,” as he was going 
to do. “ Oh,” answered Jo, “ that is a secret.” 

“A secret, eh?” said grandmother. “Very 
well; I have a secret, too. Let’s see who can 
keep theirs the longest,” and she went her way. 

“I say,” said Jo. “It’s mighty mean for you 
to cheat grandmother.” 

“It is for any one to cheat her,” said Larry, 
feeling more or less ashamed of himself. “ But I 
can’t help it. I want the egg. And she wouldn’t 
let me have it.” 

“Isn’t that stealing, then?” asked Jo scorn¬ 
fully. 


68 


A LOST.JEWEL 


“ Stealing ? You took it,” said Larry. 

“ You took it too —away from me.” 

“ Oh, bother you and your stealing ! Nobody’s 
got it now.” 

But somebody had it. The empty egg-shell, 
spinning into the air, had not gone very far, and 
had alighted in a little work-basket standing on 
the balustrade of the balcony, the lovely balcony 
where the girls liked to sit and do their half-hour’s 
sewing, looking out over the whole broad valley 
below, with its dapples and dimples of light and 
shade and color. It was Lucia’s work-basket; and 
falling among the soft cottons there, the egg-shell 
was unhurt save by the pressure of Larry’s finger 
and thumb that had jammed in one end of it a 
little. 

Meanwhile grandmother pursued her path among 
the currant and gooseberry bushes, the rhubarb 
plants, the peppers, passed the bed of sage and 
balm and spearmint and lavender, surveyed the 
asparagus with a careful eye, slipped round the 
lilac hedge into the orchard, and was lost to sight. 

Half an hour, or less, afterward, she returned, 
her eye very bright and angry, her umbrella furled ; 


A LOST JEWEL 69 

and as she swept up the walks, wrath rustled 
in her garments. 

The children were all together now, playing 
organ-grinder, a thing they never had enough of; 
and which it sometimes amused Lucia intensely to 
play, and think she was only playing, and which at 
other times made her almost sick with bitter 
remembrances of tired feet, and burning head, 
and hunger, and blows, and disgust. But she 
usually did what the other children asked; and 
just now she was the fine lady graciously giving 
pennies to her daughters to bestow, and Larry, 
bent, and glowering under his father’s soft hat, 
ground an invisible organ, and little Kate tossed a 
box-cover for a tambourine, and Jo seemed to be 
fulfilling the object of his life in taking the part 
of the monkey, skipping round on all-fours, and 
chattering inarticulately, and mumbling at a bit of 
seed-cake. 

“ Come here, every one of you,” said grand¬ 
mother. “Marnie, Lucia, Jo, Rose, Kate, Larry! 
Now, tell me which of you robbed the nest ? ” 

“Oh!” cried Lucia, springing forward involun¬ 
tarily. “ Is it robbed ” 


70 


A LOST JEWEL 


“ Yes, it is robbed ! ” said grandmother. “ And 
to the best of my belief only one person besides 
myself knew it was there to rob ! ” 

Lucia was silent. She could not have spoken 
again to save her life. Her heart sank like a stone 
in the river ; she felt that it was all over between 
her and grandmother. 

“ What nest are you talking about ? ” said Larry. 
And he gave Jo a pinch, whispering, “Honor 
bright,! ” 

“If you robbed it, you know,” said his grand¬ 
mother. 

“ Well, grandmother,” said Larry, “ I haven't 
seen any nest, and so of course I couldn’t rob 
any. And Jo’s been with me almost all the 
morning. We didn’t rob the nest.” 

“Very well,” said grandmother. “You didn’t 
any of you rob the nest. I might have known. 
It robbed itself. For all that, I shall find out, and 
a bird of the air will tell me.” 

“You needn’t have said ‘we’; you needn’t 
have said anything about me,” said Jo, when he 
and Larry, considerably disturbed and depressed, 
had wandered off alone together^ and Larry had 


A LOST JEWEL 


7 1 


stopped to whittle a raven’s head on the knot of 
an old apple-tree. “You needn’t have said I 
didn’t rob the nest. I don’t want you to tell lies 
for me. I rather have said, ‘ Find out by your 
learning! ’ ” 

“ You’d have got your jacket dusted.” 

“Perhaps I should, and perhaps I shouldn’t. 
And if I did, it doesn’t hurt long.” 

“ It hurts long enough for a good howling. 
And I didn’t tell a lie. I didn’t rob the nest — 
did I now ? ” said Larry, appealingly. 

“No; /did.” 

“You meant to put that egg back , and so you 
didn’t rob it. Don’t you see ? ” 

Jo tried to see. But his honest eyes were too 
bright not to pierce the sophistry. “No,” he 
answered. “ And I think it’s real mean in a 
fellow that grandmother gives tarts to, and pen¬ 
nies, and everything. If I tell her,” he exclaimed, 
as if determined that somebody should confess, 
“I shall just catch it! But if you tell her” — 

“Tell her what?” said Larry. “I didn’t rob 
the nest. And I’m not going to tell tales of 
you.” And backwards and forwards they kept 


7 2 


A LOST JEWEL 


up the discussion all the morning, till— They 
would be dreadfully ashamed to have me tell the 
rest! 

Lucia went to her sewing with a heavy heart. 
“ Where is your work-basket, Lucia ? ” asked 
grandmother. 

“ Oh, I do believe I left it on the balcony all 
night! ” 

“ And if a thunder-storm had happened, or a 
heavy dew ?” 

“ How could I be so careless ? My new work- 
basket ! ” 

“Lucia! One moment. Will you solemnly 
assure me that you did not rob the raven’s 
nest ? ” 

u O grandmother, indeed I didn’t! Truly, I 
didn’t ! I haven’t been near it once since.” 

“ Then how came this in your basket ? ” ex¬ 
claimed the awful tones in grandmother’s throat. 
And the pinched egg-shell was held up before 
her. 

“ In my basket ? ” 

“ In your basket.” 

“ I don’t know,” said Lucia, in despair, 


A LOST JEWEL 


73 


“ I do,” said grandmother. “ Go away. I have 
had all I want of you. Go away.” And Lucia 
went away, half stunned. 

“ I don’t see what has come over the children,” 
said Mrs. Maurice, that afternoon. “They put 
me in mind of a garden with a blight on it. 
Larry is in the hammock, where I don’t know 
when I’ve seen him lie before. Jo is digging 
in his flower-bed as if he meant to find his way 
through to China. Lucia has gone to bed with a 
sick headache, and Marnie is sitting with her—I 
declare, I am worried about that child, she has so 
many headaches, and always this little cough.” 

“Humph,” said grandmother, “you needn’t be.” 
And she hesitated a moment, and then told her 
daughter-in-law the story of the nest and the egg, 
as it looked to her. “ There is a blight on the 
garden,” she said. “ It is this child out of the 
street.” 

For a moment or two Mrs. Maurice looked 
grave, and was very still. “In Lucia’s basket,” 
she said then. “ That is really dreadful. Oh, is 
she like that, poor child ? And have I brought a 
child like that among my innocent little ones 


74 A LOST JEWEL 

And I believed in her so ! ” And the tears filled 
her gentle eyes. 

But as she looked at the neat basket, with all 
its threads and silks so carefully sorted, its scis¬ 
sors and thimble in place, its half-hemmed ruffle 
rolled so nicely, with the laborious little stitches 
where the needle was yet sticking, and seeing it 
all through her tears, she remembered Lucia sit¬ 
ting there and taking such pains to please her in 
sweet ways, and remembered daily little acts of 
love and faith. “ I do believe in her still,” said Mrs. 
Maurice. “No. This cannot be. We will keep 
quiet and find out. Some one put that egg-shell 
in Lucia’s basket. You see, it has been blown.” 

“ Pshaw ! ” said her mother-in-law. 

Now Larry was the only one of the children by 
whom, as a usual thing, an egg was blown. 


A LOST JEWEL 


75 


CHAPTER VII. 

It was early the next morning, the yellow sun¬ 
rise just gilding the gloom of her room, that 
Grandmother Maurice, who was always early astir, 
heard a low rap on her door. And in answer to 
her summons it opened, and Larry came in, a 
woe-begone-looking image enough, as he stood in 
his long nightgown, with his tumbled hair, his wan 
face, his sleepless eyes. 

“ Grandmother,” he said, “ I’ve been awake this 
ever so long. Can’t I get into your bed ? I want 
to tell you, grandmother ” — and he had to stop 
and swallow a great lump in his throat, “I — I 
guess I robbed the nest. Jo took it — to put back 
again. But I — I kept it.” 

“ My darling boy ! ” said grandmother. “ Jump 
into bed this minute, and I will sponge your face 
with some Florida-water. I knew it never was 
you ! And you have been distressing your honest 
little heart all night ”— 


76 


A LOST JEWEL 


“ It isn’t an honest heart,” groaned the darling 
boy. “It’s — it’s a real bad heart.” 

“ Hush ! ” said grandmother, bustling about for 
a bit of linen. “I won’t have you talk so. Jo, 
after all! I might have known it.” And she 
never could see it in any other light. 

“But how came it in Lucia’s basket?” she 
asked suddenly. 

“ In Lucia’s ”— 

“ In Lucia’s basket, out on the balcony. And 
a fine talking-to I gave her.” 

“Oh! You don’t say so!” cried Larry, rising 
on his elbow. “ I supposed it fell there when I 
tossed it up then. Was it crushed? oh, I say, 
grandmother — I wish I could have it for my 
string. ” 

“Well, you can.” 

“But it is too bad about Lucia.” 

“Never mind. It will do for next time. Here 
a little and there a little. Now go to sleep,” tuck¬ 
ing up the quilt in his neck. 

“But, grandmother—I’m real sorry about 
Lucia! I — I don’t think Lucia’s a favorite of 
yours,” 


A LOST JEWEL 


11 


“No, she isn’t,” said grandmother shortly. 

“ But Jane says it isn’t right to have favorites.” 
“ I declare, I shall have to put a clothes-pin on 
Jane’s tongue ! It isn’t right for your mother, 
perhaps, to have a favorite ; but grandmothers can 
do as they please. Now go to sleep again.” 

Larry was still asleep at breakfast time ; and 
the other children were all at the table when 
grandmother came down. 

“O grandmother!” shouted Joe. “If I had 
known you thought anybody else took the egg, 
I’d have told you yesterday ”— 

“You ought to have told me anyway. Didn’t 
you know I thought somebody else took it ? ” 
responded grandmother. “ Did you suppose I 
thought the egg had wings before it was hatched ? ” 
“ I wouldn’t have had Lucia go off sick about it 
for anything. I took the egg myself.” 

“ I know you did, Jo. And I dare say you’ll 
take the rest. And now there’s been enough said 
about it.” And grandmother put two lumps of 
sugar in Lucia’s cambric-tea, and sent her a 
double allowance of griddle-cakes. But she could 
not quite get over the feeling on which she had 


78 


A LOST JEWEL 


slept, that Lucia was somehow the guilty one, 
guilty of something, anyway, if she could not tell 
precisely what — guilty, in reality, only of not 
having a place in grandmother’s heart. It was of 
little use to try and create affectionate relations 
again — they must rub along. 

“ I wish there’d never been any Witch of 
Endor! ” said Marnie. “ She’s always been getting 
somebody into trouble, ever since that old English 
gardener gave her to us. And then grandmother 
sent and bought her mate ”— 

“And never regretted it but once. They’re 
more trouble to me than all my money! ” 

“ Money ! Don’t you remember when she hid 
the dollar bill in the rain-spout, grandmother? 
and nobody could tell what had become of it. 
And we knew it couldn’t have blown away. And 
Jane cried, because she said folks always sus¬ 
pected their help, and ” — 

“Jane is a simpleton!” grumbled grandmother. 
“And then she stole mamma’s ” — 

“Jane ?” cried Lucia. 

“ Why, no ! What am I talking about ? The 
Witch of Endor. She stole mamma’s little steel 


A LOST JEWEL 79 

purse with the gold piece in it. And Jo found 
it” — 

“ Those that hide can find,” said grandmother. 
“Jo saw her do it. She dug a little hole and hid 
it in the earth. And the fun of it was that her 
mate, just as solemn as a judge, went poking 
round and dug it up. And then she got my blue 
ribbon and wove it in and out of the summer¬ 
house lattice under the vine, and we never should 
have found that if she hadn’t left an end sticking 
out for her mate to pull at.” 

“ I’m sure I don’t see the use, then, of letting 
her hatch out a lot more thieves like herself,” said 
j°. 

“ Hooroah ! ” croaked a little hoarse voice, and 
the Witch of Endor’s mate came twitching his 
way up the table-cloth, and, hopping along the 
table, helped himself to a lump of sugar, and flew 
off with it. 

“It’s just like saying Amen,” said Larry, com¬ 
ing in then, as they all started and laughed. 
“And I know,” he said, “why Joe and Marnie 
don’t want the Witch of Endor to hatch out a 
lot of little ravens. They're impudent to grand- 


8o 


A LOST JEWEL 


mother sometimes, and there’s a verse in the 
Bible says, ‘ The eye that mocketh at his father and 
— and' " — 

“ Despiseth to obey his mother ,” said grand¬ 
mother. 

“ 1 The ravens of the valley shall pick it out , and 
the young eagles shall eat it' " 

“ Larry always has a verse for other folks,” said 
Marnie. “I wonder if there isn’t one about an 
‘ innocent Abigail ’ ” — 

“ She isn’t our mother or our father! ” ex¬ 
claimed Jo, as soon as he could speak for the hot 
cakes; but stopping there, because mamma, who 
had been detained by Baby, came in. 

“ It’s the same thing,” said Larry, in a very 
virtuous manner, cutting and patting the butter 
into the shape of a chubby fist while waiting for 
his own hot cakes. 

“ I hope,” said mamma, taking her place by 
Larry, “that my boy is not self-righteous. And 
if I heard either Marnie or Joe speaking improp¬ 
erly to grandmother, it would grieve me seriously, 
and I should be obliged to punish them ” — 

“ I can take care of myself,” said grandmother, 


A LOST JEWEL 


Si 


with a smile for her daughter-in-law, of whom she 
was really very fond. 

“Well — I know where there’s a great deal 
more interesting nest than theirs, anyway,” said 
Marnie, preferring for evident reasons to keep to 
the point. “ Lucia and I do. Lucia wouldn’t let 
me tell her at first, because she said she had one 
secret now, and thought it would be selfish to 
have another ” — 

“ Too sweet to be wholesome,” muttered grand¬ 
mother. 

“ But I did,” said Marnie. “ And now, if Jo 
ever gets through eating griddle-cakes, I will 
show it to all of you.” 

And presently Jo said he was sorry for it, but 
he couldn’t eat another one unless he stood up, 
and mamma said she would excuse them—for, in 
fact, she wanted a little talk with Larry all by 
themselves ; and the rest of them followed Marnie 
out across the lawn to the edge, where an iron 
railing guarded a precipice some thirty feet in 
depth, and, leaning over, they looked down into a 
depression among the weeds and grasses, and saw 
six speckled eggs, the size of a duck’s egg, and 


82 


A LOST JEWEL 


Mrs. Argus just leaving them to go and pick up 
a few grains of corn, and hurry back. 

‘“She hasn’t hidden it from us. She has hid¬ 
den it away from Argus. He will kill the chicks 
if he finds it out, you know,” said Marnie. 

“ And there have been three thunder-showers 
— soaking her through and through, you would 
think,” said Lucia. 

“ I don’t believe one of the eggs will hatch, 
then,” said Rose, with a great sigh. “And if 
they do, how will she ever get the chicks up ” — 

“ Thomas and I will climb down with baskets,” 
said Jo. 

“We will let her alone,” said grandmother with 
decision, “ and she will get them up the way she 
gets herself up. They will be out now before 
long ; she has been on the nest, looking just like 
the weeds and grasses down there, every time I 
have looked this five weeks.” 

“Then you knew it before, grandmother ! ” ex¬ 
claimed Marnie, in disappointment. 

“To be sure I did. Do you suppose I don’t 
know all that goes on, on this place ? And it’s a 
sightly spot Mrs. Argus has chosen for her nest 


A LOST JEWEL 


83 


this time, anyway, overlooking all the valley and 
the river life and the far-off gray and yellow peaks 
like the Delectable Mountains.’’ 

“ Oh, just think ! ” cried Rose. “ Six little tiny 
bits of specks of peacocks, with beautiful blue 
breasts, and throats, and crests, and long tails all 
rainbow colors ” — 

“Well, if ever! Don’t you know anything?” 
exclaimed Jo. “Don’t you know they don’t have 
tails for ever so long, and they look exactly like 
little turkeys ? ” 

“Then,” said Rose, “I don’t care whether Ar¬ 
gus, and the thunder-showers, and getting up the 
precipice, kills them or not! ” 

“It seems to me,” said Jo, with his hands in his 
pockets, and having rather a grand air as he saun¬ 
tered back, “ that we’re in the nest business up 
here. We’ve just got over Lady Thornton’s nest, 
you know ” — 

“And there’s always the hens’ nests,” said 
Marnie. 

“And now there’s the Witch of Endor’s nest, 
and Mrs. Argus’s nest, and pretty soon we’re 
going up the other side of the mountain to see 
the eagle’s nest ” — 


84 


A LOST JEWEL 


“Jo!” exclaimed his grandmother. “You are 
going to do no such thing ! I sha’n’t allow it! 
Your mother won’t allow it. You’re, not big 
enough yet — it’s different from going where you 
have been with me. You never would come home 
alive.” 

“But, grandmother,” said Jo, “I am going. 
Eagles have thunderbolts in their claws; Lucia 
says she’s seen a picture of them on a silver 
dollar, and I shall see if it’s true. And she says 
they’ve been known to carry off babies ; and we 
might find one there and bring it home to play 
with our baby. Lucia says ” — 

“Lucia says anything but her prayers ! ” cried 
grandmother. “And we’ve enough of other folks’ 
children now. I must speak to Thomas about 
this.” And away she went to do it. 

Poor Jo saw his prospects of climbing the steeps 
to the eagle’s nest vanishing with every one of 
his grandmother’s determined steps; and his air 
changed as he walked dejectedly toward the house. 
Beside that eagle’s nest, Mrs. Argus’s (which Larry 
and his mother, Larry with very red eyes, were 
just coming out to see) seemed a very tame affair 


A LOST JEWEL 85 

indeed. And then he went in and disappeared 
down the dark hall. 

At dinner-time there was no Jo. Calling every¬ 
where, and blowing the horn, failed to fetch him. 
No Jo replied. Jane thought she had seen him 
going off, round towards the other side of the 
mountain, maybe, but wasn’t sure; she had thought 
Thomas was going to follow. Cook had seen him, 
too; but she had been sorting her spices that Jo 
upset Saturday, climbing for a stick of cinnamon, 
and she hadn’t minded much: maybe it was yes¬ 
terday. Mrs. Maurice could eat no dinner, and 
went hunting and calling everywhere; she could 
hardly tell which gave her the worst trouble, some 
qualities that she found it hard to correct in Larry, 
or Jo’s spirit of adventure. 

“ He’s gone up the other side of the mountain 
to that eagle’s nest,” said grandmother. “That’s 
where he’s gone. The eagle will pick his eyes out, 
or beat him to death with his wings. And it is 
all Lucia’s fault. If she had kept quiet ” — 
And grandmother, finding some relief in blaming 
Lucia as she went, was off to send Thomas and 
the men up and down the mountain, 


86 


A LOST JEWEL 


And at tea-time there was still no Jo ; and, 
presently it appeared, no Lucia either. Lucia had 
taken a basket of sugar-gingerbread, and had 
apparently gone up the mountain for Jo, saying 
nothing to anybody. And the night was coming 
on. Now there were bears on that mountain. 


A LOST JEWEL 


87 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Poor Lucia, brooding over the words she had 
heard, came quite to grandmother’s opinion. If 
Jo had gone to find the eagle’s nest on account of 
anything she had said, it was her fault. And the 
only way to expiate her fault was to bring him 
home. To think that after she had been made 
one of the children in this family, she should be 
the means of losing one of the children out of it ! 
It never occurred to her that for her to start out 
in pursuit of Jo was only adding to the trouble. 

Lucia felt very low-spirited. And when she 
was low-spirited she always thought of Sora 
Catarina, and longed to be comforted by her; and 
then setting out on a long walk seemed more nat¬ 
ural to her. She went out through the orchard, 
and up the path that led round the curve of the 
great side of old Benbow. She had seen once a 
rude map of the mountain-paths that grandmother 
had, and she trusted to her memory of that, and 


88 


A LOST JEWEL 


her knowledge gained in her old tramping life 
with the padrone, to find the eagle’s nest, which 
they had seen once through a telescope when they 
went picnicking on the other side of the mountain 
with some friends from the hotels and boarding¬ 
houses down below. 

As she trudged along, and came out on the 
open bluff of rock on the great curve, the country 
lay below her in a wide plain reaching to the other 
mountains beyond the river. Cloud shadows 
swept over it, changing all its colors, as colors 
changed on the peacock’s neck, from golden green 
to dun, and then to purple ; and the river, widen¬ 
ing into broad pools, reflected the sky in bluer, 
deeper dyes, and far out, where it flowed between 
the hills that almost touched each other, it seemed 
to her the misty azure was the way into the great 
grown-up world. 

9 

“ Jo, I suppose,” thought Lucia, as she hurried 
on, “ will be an engineer in that world, and build 
railroads, and make tunnels through mountains, 
and bridges over rivers. And Marnie will have 
to go out in it and study for her voice — perhaps 
she will go to Italy with her music — perhaps I 


8 9 


A LOST JEWEL 

shall know how to do something, and go with her. 
And if I do I shall take poor Catarina. And then 
I may find some of my own people — although I 
never can love them as I do these dear people 
who have saved me from being a beggar girl and 
taught me all I know.” 

Just then she came to a tiny stream across 
which a sort of dam had been built, and looking 
at it a moment she recognized the work of Mr. 
Jo, who had been fain to stop on his way and play 
with the brook a little. “ Little brook,” Lucia 
fancied she could hear Jo saying, “ how silly you 
are to be hurrying down the hill so! For when 
you get there you will have to turn wheels and 
saw logs for your living, and swallow such lots of 
sawdust, too, let me tell you ! Now suppose you 
loiter a little while up here where it is so pleasant, 
and there is nothing to do but to whisper to the 
reeds and look at the sky.” And so he had 
thrown a broken sapling across its bed, and a 
quantity of the loose stones that were all about, 
and old boughs, and handfuls of gravel, and the 
brook, meeting the obstruction, had purled here 
and there across it, and half turned back, and 


90 A LOST JEWEL 

widened out and made a broad shallow bed for 
itself, where it lay mirroring the pleasant sky 
awhile, and had now just begun to break through 
and trickle drop by drop into its old place. By 
and by there would come a shower, and then the 
springs^ would overflow, and the brook would 
swell and sweep sapling and stem and stones and 
all before it down its swift flight to the valley. 
“Well, I’m on Jo’s track, anyway,” said Lucia. 
And she went on rapidly, and quite light-hearted 
now, and, after picking a handful of late luscious 
red strawberries, was presently in the soft green 
shadows of the wood. 

It was very lovely in the wood. It seemed, at 
first, as though no human being had ever trodden 
there before. There were old fallen logs entirely 
matted in green velvet moss; there were strange 
bright orange fungi on the trees, glowing in the 
chance sunbeam ; there were all sorts of pale blos¬ 
soms that she did not know. Here were spots 
carpeted with star-flowers, and with the blooms 
and last year’s coral berries of the mitchella-vine ; 
in damp places the red lilies started up like 
flames ; now a late sweetbrier went winding about 


A LOST JEWEL 


91 


a lichened bowlder, and the air was delicious with 
clethra; the atmosphere was a soft golden-green 
growing into darker emerald; but, beyond, it 
lightened and brightened into the open day; and 
the way was all the time going upward, climbing 
into the very sky, and little oaks and maples, just 
out of the ground and reddening as soon as they 
were up, together with thorny and prickly vines, 
started to catch her skirts as she clambered 
along. There was all a solemn hush in the wood 
at first, too ; and then she could hear a lonely bird 
call, a partridge drummed, a squirrel sat and looked 
at her and vanished like a streak of light; far off 
on one side she saw a little fawn beside the doe 
go bounding away. Every fairy story she had 
read since she came among the Maurices thronged 
into her memory in that wood ; it seemed to her 
as if it might be fairyland itself. These great 
ferns and brakes were like plumes for the heads of 
the horses when the fairy-court came riding by, 
as they did in the ballad. This bowlder, half 
buried in moss, if you could only say the right 
words, would open, and show the way into what 
regions of wonder ! Here, certainly, in this clear 


92 


A LOST JEWEL 


space, the “ little people ” danced on the moon¬ 
light nights; and if not they, then all the nymphs 
and fauns and dryads that Larry learned about in 
the mythology that followed his Latin reader. 
Lucia thought there was nothing she would like 
better than to stay and see it all — only she would 
want Marnie and Rose along, too. 

And then she remembered Jo, and went on, out 
into the lofty, open region where she had to climb 
from one rock to another, and she found herself 
in a ravine whose sides seemed to go straight up 
and down, but where she got one place for her 
feet and another for her hands, as she mounted, 
not daring to look back, till at last she reached 
the top and came into a pine forest almost as 
dense and dark as thick night. 

Then, for the first time, Lucia hesitated. The 
gloom in there was fearful. And she recalled 
suddenly, that, on this side of the mountain, as 
people said, there were wild-cats, if not wolves, 
and surely bears — she had seen one led in a 
chain, that had been caught here when a cub. 
Still, this must be the way to the eagle’s nest, 
and this was the way by which Jo must have 


A LOST JEWEL 


93 


gone, for she had just found a ball, probably 
dropped out of his pocket; and she must follow it. 
There was no other way, indeed, than this path, 
only half to be made out and the rest guessed. 

So Lucia took heart of grace and went on; and 
then she’ began to realize how tired she was. She 
sat down to rest, and she ate a bit of the ginger¬ 
bread she had brought. It was Jo’s, and she could 
not take much. When she got up, she felt almost 
too stiff to walk. Still, the eagle’s nest was out 
there on the cliffs above this dark funereal 
forest, and Jo was in advance of her somewhere, 
and she must not linger. She stopped a moment 
longer to give the cry with which they were wont 
to hail each other from a distance, a sort of 
“ Hal-lal-loo-ooh ! ” 

What was it she heard ? Jo’s voice above there 
in the distance ? And then the fact that there 
were wild beasts which imitated the cries of chil¬ 
dren, flashed over her. What if it were one now, 
and her voice had only told the thing where its 
prey was to be found ! Still it was unlikely to be 
anything of the sort, with the hotels and hunters 
in the valley, she bethought herself. Her life 


94 


A LOST JEWEL 


with the padrone had obliged her to look out for 
herself, and had m^de her wiser in some things 
than most girls of her age are. 

Presently she gave the call again, when, so sud¬ 
denly it made her start, a hundred voices seemed 
to burst from the air all about her and beyond 
her, and go calling and echoing and dying away 
up the mountain. 

“ Oh ! It must be souls ! ” cried Lucia. “ Just 
souls with voices ! ” and directly she had forgot¬ 
ten about the wild beasts, and Jo, and everything 
else, and was singing with the echoes, sending the 
syllables to and fro like the silver balls one some¬ 
times sees a fountain-jet keep dancing, their wild 
eerie sweetness falling faint and far at last in airy 
whispers, as if there really were spirits of the air 
frolicking with her and flocking away. 

But this was not finding Jo, she by and by saw. 

And then on and on she went, calling “Jo!” 
every few minutes, but, having gone beyond the 
place of echoes, getting no response. It was 
becoming darker and darker in the wood. The 
thought rushed over her that she might have to 
stay there all night, and made her tremble. 


A LOST JEWEL 


95 

“What did she tremble for ? ” she asked herself. 
Had she not often thought she would like to turn 
aside from the road and sleep in the wood ? Ah, 
that was in the lovely green-wood, not in this dark 
sad place of the weird pines. And had she not 
slept out-doors, beside a hay-rick or a fence, many 
a summer night ? But then the padrone had been 
with her, and he would let nothing hurt her 
except himself; and she had feared him, too, 
worse than she could fear any unknown thing; 
she had feared him so much, and been so unhappy, 
she had not cared what befell her. 

Until now, in this climb through the climbing 
forest, she had been able to see glimmers of light 
between the trunks of the trees, glimmers of the 
broad daylight out beyond. But now even they 
were dim. For some time it had been with diffi¬ 
culty that she decided on the path, scrambling 
here, there, and everywhere, over fallen trees and 
rocks, and through the wet spots of springs, 
directing herself toward the light, and every wild 
smilax and raspberry vine putting out its arms to 
clasp her and detain her. 

It was hard and hot work, for all the shade ; 


9 6 


A LOST JEWEL 


and she was dreadfully warm and dreadfully tired, 
and dreadfully hungry and thirsty, oh, thirsty was 
no name for it ! She sat down to rest just a 
moment, and to get her breath ; she had been run¬ 
ning, and falling, and clambering, and struggling, 
as fast as she could, and her lungs felt as if they 
were made of hot brass, and somebody with a pair 
of bellows was blowing up a fire in them. Down 
below her, she could see one or two dancing 
lights; perhaps they were swamp-fires, little balls 
of burning gas arising from the decay of leaves 
and wood in the water, things that she had occa¬ 
sionally seen at night when with the padrone, and 
that he, crossing himself, had called friars’ lan¬ 
terns, and that grandmother called will-o’-the-wisps. 
Whatever they were, she did not dare to stay 
longer, and she started up again for a few steps, 
and all at once stopped, overcome with terror. A 
pair of great yellow eyes were glaring into hers, 
and then a soft fluffy thing was blundering and 
brushing by her face; an owl — and she under¬ 
stood that it was night, and that she had lost her 
way on the' mountain. And that Jo must have 
lost his way, too. 


A LOST JEWEL 


97 


For a few moments Lucia was stupid or bewil¬ 
dered with fear. And then she was running for 
dear life, somewhere, anywhere, she knew not 
where, bumping herself against the trees, catch¬ 
ing her foot in tangles of vines and going head¬ 
long to the ground, stumbling over hummocks, 
falling at last into a hollow full of the pine-pins, 
and lying there breathless. 

“ Oh, what will become of me ? ” thought 
Lucia. “Mamma will be half beside herself. 
And I have only made things worse for her by 
coming. And perhaps I never shall see her 
again,” and she burst into tears. “Perhaps I 
never shall find my way out, and shall starve here 
in the wood. Oh, I am the most unfortunate 
child ! And Marnie will be so sorry, and grand¬ 
mother will say ” — 

But she was turned from the contemplation of 
what grandmother would say, by a remote sound 
that she heard, a “ Hoo ! Hoo ! Hoo ! ” and all 
her blood turned cold. She knew what the sound 
was. Thomas had told them, and had often mim¬ 
icked for them the cry of a bear. 

“Oh, what if that bear found Jo!” she ex- 


9 8 


A LOST JEWEL 


claimed. And then she began to shake with fear 
lest her little cough, that often asserted itself at 
nightfall, should make itself heard now. And if 
there was one bear, perhaps there were twenty. 
And she rose once more and blundered on a piece, 
and fell at last, utterly unable to move hand or 
foot again. 

“ God will take care of me,” she said to herself. 
“ I am just as much His child here in the forest, 
as I am at home.” And she closed her eyes, and 
whispered her evening prayer, and felt as if the 
Protecting Power were very near — for had she 
not been speaking with it ? 

There were bayberry-bushes near where she 
had fallen, or sweet-fern, she could not tell which 
by their crushed fragrance. It was a mossy spot, 
with a big rock behind it ; it was slightly warm, 
as if the sun had been there in the day, although 
doubtless no sun ever came into that recess of the 
forest. These thoughts passed through her mind, 
and then she was conscious of no more, for merci¬ 
ful sleep had sealed her senses. 

The night grew deeper and deeper, the soft 
wind rose and lifted the heavy boughs on the out- 



Lucia and Jo in the W ood, — Lage 99. 



















































































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A LOST JEWEL 


99 


skirts of the wood, but did not penetrate the 
depths where Lucia lay. Now and then a top¬ 
most branch lifted and let a starbeam slide down 
and touch her. Once or twice a screech-owl 
hooted ; but her tired dream was too deep to hear 
it. They say that there were marks in the moss 
and pine-pins as if a bear had come and nuzzled 
round the place and gone his way again, a bear 
perhaps that enough meat and honey had made 
good-natured. 

But Lucia knew nothing of it all; and only 
awoke long after midnight, from a dream of the 
stars dancing with the swamp-fires and the sparks 
in mamma’s big ring, to find a dozen lanterns 
flashing about her in the wood, and horns blow¬ 
ing out the good news to the echoes, that it 
might be heard farther down old Benbow, and 
Thomas, with a half-dozen men, was bending over 
her and Jo,—Jo, who, curled up beside her, had 
made the place seem warm and soft in the dark¬ 
ness, whose arms were full of sweet-fern, whose 
face was smeared with wild honey and with berry- 
juice, and in whose hat there was an eagle’s 
feather. 


100 


A LOST JEWEL 


CHAPTER IX. 

Grandmother said that if Jo were her boy, 
she should give him a good whipping! But 
mamma knew she never did give her boy any sort 
of a whipping, bad or good, when she had him ; 
and she herself had not the heart to do anything 
but hug and caress and cry over the lost darling. 
Afterwards she thought of Lucia’s mother. 

As for Lucia, to everybody’s amazement — but 
nobody ever could foretell with any exactness 
what grandmother was going to do — grand¬ 
mother put her to bed herself, bathed and rubbed 
her, and laid a jug of hot water at her feet, which 
Lucia patiently endured, although she was nearly 
dissolved with the heat of it, for the sake of 
having grandmother do it. The fact was that 
Lucia had done exactly what grandmother herself 
would have done in her place. 

But the thing which punished Jo more than any¬ 
thing else could, was that he hadn’t reached the 


A LOST JEWEL 


IOI 


eagle’s nest at all, but had had to turn about con¬ 
tented with a feather that he found dropped from 
one of the eagle’s wings. 

Lucia and Jo were kept up-stairs a whole week, 
too, before they were able to do much more than 
put one foot before the other, so lame and sore 
and stiff were they. And Jane said she guessed 
they’d be willing to look at mountains from down 
below, for the rest of their lives. 

It was one morning while they were still in their 
beds that a hubbub was heard on the lawn, and 
Rose came running into Lucia’s room, and Larry 
into Jo’s, to tell them that Mrs. Argus had hatched 
her pea-chicks, six little brown pea-chicks, with six 
tiny brown crests, and with big wings. They had 
been out the day before ; the mother, however, had 
only taken them a little way up, and had cuddled 
them under her broad breast, and waited. But 
this morning, bright and early, there they were 
following her about with their shy and shining 
eyes and proud gait, as assured as if they had 
always been in the world, and catching at a pass¬ 
ing gnat with the manner of always having known 
how to do it. Once in a while the mother stopped 


102 A LOST JEWEL 

and brooded them under her wings, and then she 
rambled on. 

“She has a language,” said Larry, “hasn’t she ? 
that they understand. Now, in danger, she says, 
‘ Get behind me,’ and they all do; and now she 
says, ‘ Eat this,’ and down it goes ; and now she 
says, ‘ Don’t trust those people,’ ‘ There’s enough,’ 
‘ Come away,’ and they mind her like a book.” 

“ Do you suppose Argus sees them ? ” asked 
Rose. 

“ Of course he does! ” said little Kate indig¬ 
nantly. “ What’s all the eyes in his tail for if he 
doesn’t ? ” And then the other children laughed, 
she couldn’t imagine why, and they all went 
scattering bread-crumbs through the grass, and felt 
it a condescension in Mrs. Argus and her family 
that they picked them up before disappearing 
down the garden, coming back in half an hour for 
more. 

Meanwhile, Argus himself, mounted on the 
barn, sounded his clarion louder than ever; and 
Mrs. Maurice said, some twenty times a day, that 
she should die if that bird didn’t. 

The pea-chicks were four days old when one 


A LOST JEWEL 


103 


Saturday evening, on Mr. Maurice’s arrival from 
town, the children led him out to show him where 
for three nights they had stayed down in the old 
nest under their mother’s wing. There was 
nothing to be seen ; but half-way up the precipice, 
on a great red cedar, Mrs. Argus appeared to be 
roosting contentedly by herself. 

“Oh, she has deserted them, papa!” cried 
Larry. 

“ Argus has killed them ! ” cried Marnie. 

“ Let’s look about and see if they are in the 
grass,” cried Rose. 

“Wait a moment,” said their father. For Mrs. 
Argus, conscious that she had been observed, was 
changing her position. 

“ There they are ! ” cried Lucia. And there, 
nestled under her wings, three on each side, were 
the little peacocks. 

“ And they flew a height of fifteen feet to roost, 
when they were four days old ! ” exclaimed Mr. 
Maurice. “ And that branch hangs in mid-air any¬ 
way. I wouldn’t believe it if any one else had 
seen it ! ” 

But before long, in their growing ambition, the 


104 


A LOST JEWEL 


Argus family selected an upper branch of the huge 
and jagged old pine, which they had to reach by 
easy flights from one tree to another, and there 
they made their nightly home the rest of their 
lives. 

Grandmother had given Marnie the ownership 
of the pea-chicks, and had told her that if she 
reared them she could sell them for fifteen dollars 
a pair. “ Goodness knows one pair’s enough for 
me ! ” said grandmother. 

“ I think you might have given me one pair of 
them,” said Jo, who loved to tease. 

“ I gave you Lady Thornton. And just see the 
care you take of her. I don’t believe you have 
the first idea where she is.” 

“And nobody else has!” shouted Jo. “She’s 
everywhere. You might as well ask where the 
wind is. Lend me your handkerchief, grand¬ 
mother ? ” 

And grandmother put her hand into that won¬ 
derful pocket of hers, and took hold of something, 
and tugged : “ Why, what’s the ” — she began, and 
out came a handkerchief — or was it a sheet ? It 
really was one of the crib sheets. 


A LOST JEWEL 


105 


“ I might know you were round again, Jo,” she 
exclaimed. “Just take that and put it where you 
found it, now. And as for what else is in this 
pocket, you’ll have none of it ; ” and she divided 
some chocolates among the rest, very well aware, 
notwithstanding, that Jo was quite capable of get¬ 
ting his share from them ; and then she crumbled 
a ginger-snap to dust for the little Arguses. Argus 
himself, fortunately, had found a splendid grass¬ 
hopper field a quarter of a mile away, and there 
he betook himself every morning; and, although 
he blew his horn from time to time there, and his 
wife answered that all was well, he came home 
only at evening, when he took up his station on 
the top of the barn and assumed his watch-dog 
duties. Nobody ever came up the mountain road 
after dark; but Argus evidently meant that if 
anybody did he should be sorry for it; and every 
noise he heard — a slamming blind, a barking dog, 
a cock crowing in the distance, a step, a voice — 
he answered with one of his most dreadful yells.' 

One morning just as the gray was melting into 
pink, and the pink stealing like a misty breath 
over the placid blue of the upper sky with all its 


io 6 


A LOST JEWEL 


fainting stars, Marnie was awakened by a most 
shocking sound. Never had she heard such a 
shocking sound in her life; an Indian war-whoop 
might have been a whisper to it. 

Jo and Larry thought it probably was an Indian 
war-whoop ; and they nestled down in bed and hid 
their heads under the coverlet. It was too horri¬ 
ble a sound to believe; it was barking, growling, 
yelping, crowing, screaming, shouting, crying, all 
in one. And then it came again. “ It can’t be 
grandmother with her pocket-handkerchief,” said 
Marnie, “ sounding louder because we were asleep. 
She makes me jump sometimes.” 

“ It is the pea-hen,” said Lucia. “ I have heard 
her before. I don’t know where I have heard her 
before — where can I have been where there 
were peacocks ? ” Perhaps it was a faint gleam of 
some Italian garden that haunted her. “Some¬ 
body or something is after her chicks, you see! ” 
And out of bed both the girls sprang, and down 
stairs their bare feet pattered to the heavy door 
which it seemed as if they never could undo. 
“ What is the matter with it ? ” whispered Marnie. 
“We never used to lock a door at night, and now 


A LOST JEWEL 107 

we’re all covered with bolts and chains. That’s 
what those men must have been doing to the 
windows. Dear, dear,” as she tugged away, “ I 
should think somebody was going to steal us in 
our sleep! Here, you try, Lucia,” and between 
them both, at last, the door opened, and they were 
out on the piazza. 

Mrs. Argus was standing on the grass, with her 
sons and daughters well behind her, and just at 
that moment a great yellow cat from the mountain 
bounded by. Mrs. Argus made for him with out¬ 
spread wings, and at the same instant every one 
of the chicks disappeared as if by magic. When 
Mrs. Argus came back in triumph, it was to find 
her family gone, and although she called, they 
returned no more, and her last state was worse 
than her first. She trumpeted again, in a new 
alarm, mounted the balustrade and called them, 
flew to the top of the old tree the better to survey 
the field, and sent up her whoop again in a way 
to curdle the blood. 

“ Where do you suppose they went ? Over the 
precipice ? Into the river ? Will she ever get 
them again ? ” Marnie and Lucia asked each other 


io8 


A LOST JEWEL 


together. But they knew somebody would be after 
them, if they stayed out there any longer, and 
they must go in and dress. They had to wait a 
moment, though, to see, just over the middle of 
the flaming sunrise, in the gap of the hills, a thin, 
yellow streak of a waning moon, and as if hang¬ 
ing from its lower tip a great star just throwing 
out a last ray before melting into the light. 

“ Oh, it is as bright, it is as beautiful, as 
mamma’s ring ! ” said Marnie, as if praise could 
go no farther, and the morning-star ought to be 
gratified. 

“ As mamma’s eyes ! ” said Lucia. 

They lingered another moment to see the wind 
strip a sheet of dew off one of the mountain lawns 
and roll it up the mountain-side in clouds that, 
just pierced by the sun, seemed to be dripping 
with every jewel known, and then they regained 
their rooms. 

“ Say, Lucia, were you ever up as early as this 
before ? ” 

“ Oh, many times,” said Lucia, recalling early 
starts for long tramps with the padrone. “ But I 
don’t remember ever seeing that star before. Do 


A LOST JEWEL 


109 


you suppose they don’t have it for very poor peo¬ 
ple, trudging along the road ? ” 

Marnie laughed, as well she might. “ I guess 
it’s always there for folks that have eyes to see 
it,” she said. “ Only, if we’re looking at the 
road, we don’t see the sky. It’s splendid to be 
up so early! Don’t you think so ? Before any 
one’s stirring, and ” — 

“ And you have the morning all to yourself, and 
it seems as if the world was just made. Oh, just 
hear the birds ! ” 

“ I mean to get up as early every morning of 
my life.” 

“ So do I.” 

“ Where’s my other stocking, I wonder now ? 
Lucia, you’ve got my garters ” — 

“No. I”— And they had both fallen over 
against their pillows, sound asleep again. 

The first thing that was inquired for, some 
hours later, but before breakfast could be eaten, 
was the fate of the pea-chicks. 

“ The ould leddy has them all, barrin’ the one,” 
said Thomas. “There’s the five of them now.” 

“Oh, isn’t that too bad!” said Marnie. “The 



IIO 


A LOST JEWEL 


yellow cat got that one. The poor little chick! 
What ever did it think ” — 

“And how dreadfully its mother must feel!” 
said Lucia — Lucia, who had thought a great deal 
about her own mother, and wondered if she had 
one, before the days of the padrone. 

“I wonder which it likes' best, being a little 
peacock here or a wild-cat up in the mountain,” 
remarked Jo, before he skipped in for his break¬ 
fast. 

“And it’s seven dollars and a half gone out of 
my ninety that I should get for selling them,” said 
Marnie. “ Ninety dollars is a good deal, isn’t it ? 
What should you do if you had ninety dollars, 
Lucia ? ” 

“Oh, I should send Catarina right home.” 

“Well — look here — I’ll do it! It’ll be just 
the same, won’t it ? But, dear me — why, it 
isn’t ninety ! What was I thinking of ? It’s fif¬ 
teen dollars a pair, and there are only three pairs, 
of course, and now the odd one won’t count, I 
suppose. Three times fifteen — how much are 
three times fifteen, Lucia? ” 

But that was too much for Lucia, without a 


A LOST JEWEL 


111 


slate and pencil; and it was too much for Lucia’s 
quondam teacher, too, although she did not admit 
it, and was mightily ashamed of it. But they 
broke off some twigs to scratch out the figures in 
the gravel-path and solve the great question, when 
the bell rang again, and they had to hurry in lest 
grandmother’s voice should be added to the sec¬ 
ond bell-ringing. 

Mamma was sitting by the piano that forenoon 
with Marnie, and Marnie was trying to make her 
breath come from far down, as if her throat were 
nothing but a pipe for the wind to whistle through, 
when all at once Lucia ran into the house, and 
raced up the stairs, and shut the door of her room 
behind her so that the house shook. 

Mrs. Maurice stopped Marnie and turned about 
in surprise ; and, the next thing, they heard the 
strains of Lady Jane’s song in the play of “ Pa¬ 
tience,” grinding out on a hand-organ; “ There 
will be too much of me, in the coming by and by.” 
Mrs. Maurice hurried to the window and looked 
through the bowed blinds, and then, as if she 
didn’t care about being seen herself, rang for 
Thomas to give the man some money, and send 


I 12 


A LOST JEWEL 


him away, and call the children in. “There’s too 
much of him now,” said she, “ without waiting for 
the coming by and by.” And she watched the 
fellow, with his instrument on his back, go down 
the mountain-road, followed by a singular old 
woman—cloaked and hooded in all the heat, and 
carrying a monkey in her arms. And then Mrs. 
Maurice went up-stairs to find Lucia, who in her 
new life had never been able to endure the nerv¬ 
ous strain of hearing a hand-organ, hidden under 
all the blankets to be found, and to calm and con¬ 
sole and reassure her. Lucia had only heard the 
organ; she had not seen the people. I can’t say 
whether she would have run or not if she had 
known that Sora Catarina had been so near her. 

But when Mrs. Maurice went down-stairs again, 
among all the children it was Jo that was missing. 
Jo had followed the organ-man down to the vil¬ 
lage, and the long spy-glass presently showed him 
trudging along beside them. 

“ It’s the same man, bad scran till him! that did 
be hanging round last week,” said Maria. 

“ If he saw me he’ll be sure,” whispered Mrs. 
Maurice to grandmother. And grandmother, with- 


A LOST JEWEL 


113 

out wasting a word, was having Abdallah put in, 
in double-quick time, had started in pursuit, and 
had presently caught up with him. 

“ Lill boya want ze music,” said the old woman, 
with a smile, turning towards grandmother, at 
whose commanding voice Jo had stopped, and was 
now climbing into the wagon. 

“ And you want little boys! ” cried grand¬ 
mother. 

“ No, no, no, no,” said the old woman with as 
many emphatic shakes of the head. “ Not want 
boya; want talka. He talka mush.” 

“ Well, you go along ! And if I find you round 
here again, Til have you taken up ! There’s a law 
in this State against tramps.” 

The old woman laughed and showed her glitter¬ 
ing teeth. She turned, and pointed to the hand- 
organ. “ Not trampa. Business ! ” and then she 
confronted grandmother squarely, like one old 
queen confronting another. She looked at her a 
moment in silence, while grandmother gathered 
up the reins. “ You one richa woman,” she said. 
“ I povera.. I vittoriosa! ” and accenting what 
she said with a shower of nods, she turned and 


A LOST JEWEL 


114 

stalked away. But her gestures spoke more than 
her words. “ She means to tell me,” said grand¬ 
mother in her usual fashion of thinking aloud, 
“that I am rich, and she is poor, but that she 
is victorious over me, for all that. — Jo!” she 
exclaimed suddenly, in another key, “ what have 
those people been saying to you ? ” 

“ Nothing much,” said Jo, chewing the spicy 
skin of his stick of black birch. “ They asked me 
if I had a new sister; and I said No, I guessed the 
baby was most two years old, and besides he was 
a boy. And they said a big sister, dark eyes, 
came in old ragged gown, ‘one, two, three sum¬ 
mers ago; and I said Lucia came in a white ruffled 
wrapper”— 

“Blab!” said grandmother. “Your tongue will 
get you into difficulty yet, young man ! ” and her 
great gray eyes flashed with scorn on account of 
Jo’s unruly member. 

“ Now, what do those people want to know 
about Lucia ? ” Grandmother Maurice asked her 
daughter-in-law, when she reached home. “That’s 
a part of the mischief of taking her, and I told 
you so. They will always be hanging round for 
black-mail.” 


A LOST JEWEL 11 5 

And Mrs. Maurice wrote her husband all about 
it by the next post ; and grandmother drove off 
to hunt up the selectmen and have the organ- 
grinder and his old woman sent out of the town- 
limits by the constable that very day. 

“ Would you have done just so if they hadn’t 
been very poor, grandmother ? ” asked Jo, after¬ 
wards. 

“ They wouldn’t have done just so, perhaps,” 
answered grandmother. 

“ But Lucia says that old woman may have 
been a princess in her own country, for all we 
know.” 

“ Lucia’s reading altogether too many fairy- 
stories. She wasn’t. She wasn’t anything but a 
beggar-woman. And what if she was a princess ? 
Princesses are as common as cows in Italy. The 
restaurants are full of marquises waiting on the 
table. There was one mended his shoes, cob¬ 
bling, when your grandfather was over there. 
Counts go out to service ” — 

“ Oh ! ” 

“Oh?” mimicked grandmother. “What if they 
do? You just remember, Jo, that we don’t care 


A LOST JEWEL 


116 

anything about princes and marquises and that 
sort of stuff over here. Over here we’re all sov¬ 
ereigns. And it means more to the human race 
to be an American over here, than it does to be a 
crowned prince over there.” 

“ Are you an American, grandmother ? ” 

“Of course I am.” 

“It seems to me that you are an — an — what 
is this they call it ? An — not a democrat like 
Thomas—the other thing.” 

“ You mean an aristocrat ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ Go along, you sauce-box ! ” 


A LOST JEWEL 


II 7 


CHAPTER X. 

But Lucia, and Jo too, forgot about the organ- 
grinder soon, in the loss of another of the little 
Arguses. 

“ Died of the dew and the cold grass,” grand¬ 
mother said, as Thomas came up with the deceased 
in his hand to the greensward where they sat — 
they almost lived out-doors in these pleasant days. 
“Too weak to stand the mother’s rambling. She 
ought to be shut up. She has always laid her 
eggs away before, and let no one see her till she 
had really killed every chick she had with her 
roaming habits.” 

“ But I should think Nature would know best,” 
said mamma. “ And that teaches her what to 
do.” 

“Nature!” said grandmother. And her em¬ 
phasis said, as plainly as words could, that Nature 
didn’t know half as much as grandmother did. 
“They’re not living in a state of nature, They 


ii 8 


A LOST JEWEL 


are living artificially. Food, lodging, friends, ene¬ 
mies, climate, all different from their natural ones. 
I’ll have Argus shut up, anyway. He has left 
his happy hunting-grounds among the grass¬ 
hoppers, and he may be the culprit.” 

“I wish you would,” said Mrs. Maurice. “He 
doesn’t make his halloo when he’s shut up. And 
then perhaps Baby will have a whole night’s 
sleep.” 

“Why under the sun didn’t you say so be¬ 
fore ? ” 

“Oh, and then we never shall see him spread 
his tail! ” cried several small voices. 

“If you’re not the most selfish horde of chil¬ 
dren I ever saw! What’s his tail to your brother’s 
sleep ? Besides, it’s coming out now every day,” 
said grandmother. 

You can well imagine how the children watched 
the growth of the remaining chicks, as Mrs. Argus 
brought them round the piazzas at her regular half- 
hour intervals, to the unbounded delight of Baby, 
who jumped and laughed and scolded and talked 
in his little lingo, as if he knew what pretty things 
they ought to be by and by. None watched more 


A LOST JEWEL 


119 

eagerly, though, than Lucia, in her double motive 
of love for Marnie and love for Catarina; and 
Rose, looking to see if any of them had a more 
shining crest than another, or if there were any 
sign of a sprouting tail among the little brown 
feathers, used to follow them up and down, hours 
at a time. So, too, did the Witch of Endor, who 
had left her own nest after the two-fold depreda¬ 
tion of Jo and a snake that had sucked the rest of 
the eggs. The poor Witch of Endor perhaps felt 
spitefully towards the successful mother of unmo¬ 
lested eggs ; for she watched her chance to give 
the chicks many a sly dab with her black beak; 
and when Mrs. Argus turned on her, then the 
Witch of Endor’s mate would pop up out of the 
grass, and say “ Hooroah ! ” and burst into a clat¬ 
ter of laughter, and Mrs. Argus would turn and 
run with all her brood about her, and the ravens 
would fly off satisfied with mischief till next time. 

“ These pockets,” said mamma, going through 
the children’s gowns and knickerbockers one 
night, “ are in a sad state. Every one of them is 
transformed into a safe for bread-crumbs. Fortu¬ 
nate it isn’t mush.” But mush of every kind was 


120 


A LOST JEWEL 


scorned by the objects of interest. “I suppose, 
though, that the peacock fever will soon pass,” 
she added. “ For I see that another of the little 
fellows seems to be drooping.” 

And so he was. He stood on one leg; he 
tucked his head under his wing, poor thing, in 
broad daylight ; he trembled ; he ate nothing; he 
showed no interest in the grasshopper under his 
nose; he was too weak to fly up and roost beside 
his mother. Marnie took him into the kitchen, and 
put him into a basket of wool, and gave him meat, 
and oil, and wine, and dry bread, and dough ; and 
the next morning he was dead—as grandmother 
said she should think he would be. 

Mrs. Argus looked worried, the children 
thought ; but she bore it beautifully. She had 
begun by being able to count, for if one of her 
number were missing she knew it, and made a 
point of hunting it up. But now, as if making a 
virtue of necessity, she seemed to think three 
in a family were quite enough, and walked about 
followed by her three as proudly as though they 
had been thirty, all the greens and fawns of her 
throat and breast shining, her beautiful wood-cob 


A LOST JEWEL 


121 


ored back and tail looking like a fashionable street 
garment, and her soft, pale wing-feathers seeming 
like the sleeves of some Oriental under-jacket. 
She led her remaining children to their half-hourly 
banquets, clucked to them to come away when 
she thought fit, apparently believing in frequent 
meals and light ones, sounded her battle-cry at 
the sight of the Witch of Endor and her mate 
or any other enemy, and flew with them all to 
the top of a tree; and the chicks grew so big and 
strong that Larry took it upon himself to let 
Argus out of his confinement and see what would 
happen. 

Poor Argus, flying at once to a lofty lookout, 
espied his wife and children, and quickly joined 
them. To his surprise, Mrs. Argus gave him one 
sidelong glance and deliberately moved away with 
her haughtiest gait; and he went and hid himself 
in an apple-tree, and stayed there while a shower 
came up and drenched him. What a sight was all 
his magnificence then ! Soaked and dripping he 
was but a poor small creature, and the tail of many 
dyes was nothing but a draggled rag. He perched 
pn the balcony when the sun burst out and the 


122 


A LOST JEWEL 


great thunder-heads went rolling gold and purple 
down the valley, and spread his tail to dry it. 

“ He is trying to rival the rainbow,” said Lucia. 

“He looks like Cleopatra’s barge with all sail 
set,” said Larry, who had heard his father say 
something of the sort, when quoting the famous 
lines : 

“ The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne 
Burned on the water: the poop was beaten gold; 
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that 
The winds were lovesick with them.” 

“Oh, look at him now!” cried Rose, for, with 
his gorgeous tail still widely spread, Argus was 
turning round and round in the wildest kind of a 
dance. Rose tumbled off the steps and into the 
wet grass in a convulsion of laughter — it was her 
little black kitten that had seized one of Argus’s 
long tail-feathers, and he was spinning round and 
round in an agony to be rid of her, and she dared 
not let go lest she should be slung into outer space. 
But what a splendid sight he was as he whirled 
about! 

It only took another week to finish off two more 
of Mamie’s fifteen-dollar pieces, as papa called 


A LOST JEWEL 


123 


them; there was but one chick left, and that 
evidently a hen, a little exact miniature of her 
mother, the throat and breast already slightly 
changing green and gold in the sun, the soft pale 
wing-feathers just showing. Mrs. Argus, perhaps 
on account of the family affliction, had become 
reconciled with her husband, and he went about 
in her company, eating grass and suspecting 
enemies, and taking as much care of the chick as 
its mother did. Sometimes he held down his 
stately neck for Mrs. Argus to pick it; he had 
begun to shed some of his finest feathers, which 
little Kate and Rose sought for all over the place 
and brought in for Baby to wave like a sceptre, 
stuck over the looking-glasses, and used for wands 
when they played fairy queens. Sometimes Mrs. 
Argus would pick his stately neck for him as much 
as twenty minutes, and then she would gently 
offer her own neck for the same kindly office; not 
to be outdone, Argus always scratched the prof¬ 
fered throat a moment or two, and then he gave it 
a nip and stalked away as if he had had enough of 
that. 

“I don’t care/’ said Larry, as they bemoaned 


124 


A LOST JEWEL 


the lost chicks. “ Perhaps it’s all for the best. 
There’ll be two pea-hens next summer, and we’ll 
have twelve chicks, then, instead of six.” 

Alas ! One day, some time after, they were all 
awakened by the most doleful wailing that ever 
was heard outside an Irish wake. No keening 
could compare to it. “ It’s fit to break the heart 
of yees,” said Thomas. “The last chick’s dead. 
And it do be the father and the mother lifting up 
their voices together!” And that was the fact ; 
and Argus was disposing of all the false things 
that the savants have said about him, proving 
himself the most grief-stricken and sympathetic of 
family men. In the midst of the uproar of the 
afflicted pair, came a little shrill voice that 
belonged to neither of them. It was the Witch 
of Endor’s mate joyously saying “ Hooroah !” It 
made even Lucia smile ; and Lucia had been very 
melancholy of late. 

“I don’t see,” Marnie had said to her, “what 
makes you so dumpish. You don’t play worth a 
cent, and you don’t tell any more stories, and I 
don’t know when I’ve heard you sing,” for Lucia 
had a pretty little talent of improvising, |§ if 


I 


A LOST JEWEL 125 

because the chicks are dying, and so you can’t do 
what you want to do for Catarina?” 

“ No, no, oh no ! that is only just one thing.” 

“ Because,” continued Marnie, with her consol¬ 
ing arms about her, “ I don’t believe but what papa 
and mamma mean to help you about that. I heard 
them talking about her.” 

“ I know they were.” 

“ Well, then, what is it ? ” 

“Oh, you will know soon enough !” Lucia had 
cried, breaking away from her, and running to 
hide her sorrows where she should not be seen. 

But to-day Lucia could not help smiling when 
she heard the little raven’s congratulations, 
although the grief of Argus and his wife had been 
very touching. 

“ Well, well,” said grandmother, wiping her 
eyes, for she had not laughed, “ this is idling; and 
idling butters no parsnips. And there’s the peach 
jam waiting. Anybody that wants to help me 
pare peaches, and hasn’t taken one off the boughs 
on the sly, all summer, can come along.” 

Nobody turned to go but Lucia. “ I could have 
told you so,” said grandmother. “The white 


126 A LOST JEWEL 

hen’s chicken ! I rather think I’ll do the peaches 
by myself.” 

But mamma called Lucia to come with her; for 
some strange events, nearly concerning her, had 
taken place while the little peacocks had been 
running their race. 


A LOST JEWEL 


127 


CHAPTER XI. 

“ Come, let us do our sewing together,” said 
mamma, “while Marnie is practising.” For Mar- 
nie had gone to the piano, and was running up and 
down the scales with her flute-like tones. “ Come 
to my room where the sun is. I feel a little cool 
out-doors this morning.” 

“ Doesn’t it sound like a bobolink, mamma ? ” 
said Lucia. 

“It sounds like Marnie,” said mamma, with a 
smile. 

“ I love to hear her,” said Lucia. “ Sometimes 
I shut my eyes, and I think angels will sing so.” 

“ You are a good child, not to be jealous of 
Mamie’s gift.” 

“ Oh, not of that! ” answered Lucia. “ I had 
rather it should be Mamie’s. But if Marnie 
should love any one, any other girl, better than 
me, then, oh, then, I couldn’t bear it! ” And all 


128 A LOST JEWEL 

at once, Lucia turned, burying her face in the 
sofa-cushions. 

“ My dear child ! ” said Mrs. Maurice. “ What 
makes you think of such a thing ? ” 

“ Oh, because, because,” said Lucia, with a 
burst of sobs and gasps, “ I know you are going to 
send me away ! I heard you say, ‘ When Lucia is 
gone’!” 

“ My poor little dear! ” said Mrs. Maurice, lift¬ 
ing her up beside herself. “ Whatever happens, I 
am not going to send you away. Listen now. I 
have some things to tell you; really quite remark¬ 
able things. I am going to tell them to you, 
because I don’t want you to betaken by surprise.” 

“ Why not, mamma ? ” 

“ You will see. I had a letter last night from a 
lady who, some years ago, lost her little girl in a 
very cruel way, a way worse than death. For the 
child was stolen by she knew not whom, to become 
she knew not what.” 

“ Oh ! ” cried Lucia sympathetically, looking up 
with her streaming eyes. “Just the way I was, I 
suppose!” 

“ There was no effort that was not made, both 


A LOST JEWEL 


129 


by this lady’s husband and herself,” continued 
Mrs. Maurice, “ to find the child; but without 
success. Among other things they advertised in 
the Italian newspapers — they were Italians, this 
lady and gentleman — and in placards on the way- 
side ; and at last, just as’ they were giving up in 
despair, one of those newspapers happened to find 
its way over here. It fell into the hands of Italian 
street-cleaners and organ-grinders, who herded 
together, and it was passed from one to another 
of those of them that could read.” 

“ Oh, I see them now ! ” cried Lucia, shuddering. 
“ Beppo could read, it seems ” — 

“Beppo,” said Lucia. “Beppo— Why, the 
padrone’s name was Beppo, too.” 

“And he read it to Catarina” — 

“To Catarina!” 

“ And they both saw, as he read the offer of a 
large, very large reward for the return of a child, 
that they had let a fortune slip through their 
fingers in selling that child, one day, to a gentle¬ 
man and lady who drew up their phaeton beside 
the road and took the child away with them. For 
the child that Beppo and Catarina had had ” — 


130 


A LOST JEWEL 


“It is strange,” said Lucia reflectively, “that 
their names should have been Beppo and Catarina.” 

Mrs. Maurice waited a few moments for Lucia 
to turn the last thought over in her mind. “For 
the child they had had in their keeping,” she con¬ 
tinued then, “ was evidently the one wanted, both 
by the description of her, by little memories that 
she had at first, and by a certain mark, a tiny 
gray lock hidden under the curls on the left side 
of her head about the ear ” *— 

“Why!” exclaimed Lucia, opening her eyes 
widely, “that is exactly like mine!” 

“ Exactly like yours. I went and lifted your 
curls last night in your sleep, and there was the 
little white lock. And when Beppo — to go on — 
got through saying terrible things about his luck, 
I suppose he must have said, ‘ I will steal that 
child again, and get the reward for her;’ and I 
think Catarina said, ‘/ will steal that child this 
time, and give her to her father and mother.’ 
And they both took the road and came.” 

“Oh! You are telling this about me!” cried 
Lucia, standing up and sitting down again, and 
trembling like a leaf. 


A LOST JEWEL 


131 

“ Beppo had followed us to the house that day 
we took you into the phaeton ; we drove slowly, 
you know, you were so weak and ill. And so he 
knew papa’s name, and he learned that we lived in 
the mountains in the summer. And that is why 
he came playing round here, with his organ and 
old Catarina ” — 

“ If I had only known it was poor Catarina! ” 

“ Since he came, that first day, you have never 
been out of somebody’s sight a minute, for fear he 
should come again — as he did. The first time, 
he came to make sure; he did not know if you 
were living, or whether we might not have placed 
you somewhere else. - The second time he 
brought Catarina along, meaning to entice you 
away. Catarina thought it was all right, because 
she meant to give you to your real parents, and 
thought we would not be willing to do so. We 
drove them away, you recollect. But Catarina 
had found out all she wanted from Jo as he 
trudged along beside her, some way behind the 
padrone. And as soon as she could she went to 
a good priest, and told him all; and he sent word 
by cable to the poor father and mother in Italy, 


132 


A LOST JEWEL 


not waiting for so slow a thing as a letter. The 
father and mother sailed on the next steamer, to 
bring home their little girl. They waited in New 
York for some letters to pass between us — they 
dared not be disappointed again ; the lady’s health 
had been badly shattered by the trouble. The 
last note came yesterday evening ; and I expect 
them here now, almost at any time.” 

Lucia’s eyes were distended with terror. For 
a moment she was silent. And then she sprang 
to her feet with a wild cry. “ Oh, mamma! 
Then I am going away! You are going to send 
me away after all! How can I — how can I leave 
you ? ” and her voice rose to a frantic pitch. 

“No, darling,” said Mrs. Maurice, very calmly, 
in order to compose her. “ I am not going to 
send you away. If your father and mother should 
consent, I shall keep you always. If they are 
willing, you shall have your choice, to go or stay.” 
“ Oh, it won’t take me long to choose ! ” 

“ Perhaps it will. I think from your mother’s 
letter that she must be a very lovely woman. 
Your home over there must be nearly as beautiful 
as Paradise. And you are the only child of your 


A LOST JEWEL 


133 


father and mother, who were half-crazed when 
they lost you” — 

And then Lucia was hanging round Mrs. Mau¬ 
rice's neck, and they were crying together, fit to 
break their hearts. 

But after a while they were more quiet ; and 
they sat a long time talking it all over again with 
closer detail and new facts. And they recounted 
to each other what Lucia had learned and un¬ 
learned in the two years, and made plans for 
future happiness in some way. “ And you are 
sure you think it is not right for me to stay; that 
it is wrong for me not to go, mamma ? That I 
really ought to go ? ” Lucia asked over and over 
again. 

“Yes, I suppose so,” Mrs. Maurice admitted, 
half doubtfully. “ But unless they promise to 
bring you back every summer, I don’t know that I 
can let them have you at all.” 

“Oh, I cannot bear it, I cannot bear it! ” sobbed 
Lucia again. “ And papa, my dear papa, what 
will I do without him ? What will he do without 
me ? And what ever shall I do without the 


134 


A LOST JEWEL 


“ Well, there is one thing about it,” said Mrs. 
Maurice, when their last outburst subsided a little, 
“the Italian climate will kill the cough; and 
here ” — 

“And here the cough might kill me,” said 
Lucia. “And perhaps, oh, perhaps, mamma, my 
other father and mother will have Marnie come 
and stay with me and study music. You know 
you always said she would go there some day.” 

“ Perhaps so,” said Mrs. Maurice. 

“At any rate,” said Lucia, biting the corner of 
her handkerchief, “ it is better than when I was 
afraid I was to be sent back to the padrone. But 
I never meant to stay with him. I meant cer¬ 
tainly to run away.” 

“ How could you think such a thing of me ? ” 
said Mrs. Maurice. And at last, after a great 
many more perhapses, mamma slipped a pillow 
under Lucia’s head on the sofa, and sat beside 
her, smoothing the hot forehead with the cool 
hand where glittered the ring the children loved 
to see, and singing a soft-voiced lullaby, till Lucia, 
tired out with feeling, was in the land of dreams, 


A LOST JEWEL 


135 


CHAPTER XII. 

Lucia was very still and sad for an hour or two 
of the rest of the day. She sat in the hammock a 
good deal, or in the sea-chair on the piazza, or went 
looking about her as if taking a mute farewell of 
the spots she loved. 

And yet she had not made up her mind. 
Mamma had said that her father and mother had 
a right to take her; but she hardly believed they 
would insist on their right. She was not at all 
sure that she should go. There was only one 
thing that made her feel as if she certainly might, 
when she thought of it; and that was grand¬ 
mother, —grandmother, who had doubted her, and 
who probably always would, who had looked 
askance on her, who plainly grudged her a place 
among her own darlings. And it was impossible 
for her to think of Marnie at all; the tears would 
well over her eyes, as the great dewdrops from a 
blush-white rose, every time she heard Marnie’§ 


A LOST JEWEL 


136 

voice or saw her blue gingham gown. She would 
not tell Marnie anything about it — mamma had 
not; it would be time enough when it was inevit¬ 
able. 

Grandmother came out with her pan of peach- 
stones whose kernels she was removing to make 
the domestic noyau that her grandmother had 
made before her, and sat down in the pleasant 
shade. “ Who goes by the road of By-and-By 
will arrive at the house of Never/’ said grand¬ 
mother ; “ and I have been meaning to put these 
peach-kernels to soak ever since we began to have 
the peaches.” 

Mamma helped her a few minutes ; but then 
she went off to look into the condition of her 
hens, having first a scrimmage with the Witch 
of Endor’s mate, who was marauding her work- 
basket. 

Grandmother stooped and caught up the raven, 
and put him in her pocket to surprise him, — that 
capacious pocket about which the children had so 
much to say. “ Button, button, who’s got the 
button ? ” said grandmother. 

The bird crowed and laughed, and said “ Ma s ” 


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A LOST JEWEL 


137 


and “Jo,” and the rest of his limited vocabulary 
in a muffled way, bustled about in the pocket, as 
if that were a place after his own heart, nestled 
there quietly awhile, became uneasy, and presently 
appeared climbing up the back of her skirt, and 
her chair; and perching on her shoulder at length, 
he solemnly stared into her face with his glitter¬ 
ing eye and its unfathomable expression. Lucia 
laughed to see him, and yet felt a strange wonder, 
looking at the grave countenance of the bird 
whose eye seemed to declare that it could say so 
much if it would. But before long she rose and 
walked away; she did not feel exactly comfortable 
with grandmother — grandmother could do with¬ 
out her. She heard Marnie carolling like a linnet 
down in the August pippin orchard, and the voices 
of little Kate and Rose in loud dispute over Loui- 
sina, whom little Kate had appropriated, and who 
was too sick to be moved anyway, suffering, as 
she was, from a complication of disorders that 
would have killed any other than a jumeau bebe; 
Rose had taken her down to the orchard because 
the smell of the apples might do her good ; per¬ 
haps she needed to be salivated; the smell mad§ 


138 A LOST JEWEL 

Rose’s mouth water. Lucia wandered slowly 
down their way. 

Larry was busy in his own particular mud-hole 
near the quince-bushes, where he kept his potter’s 
clay damp, and where earlier in the summer 
he had a supply of frogs’ spawn looking like 
strings and clusters of the loveliest pearls, and 
where his caddis-worms and a raft of other things 
of the sort were stored ; and Marnie called out 
that they were all going up to the trout-brook 
with Thomas and Jane. Lucia thought that per¬ 
haps it was the last afternoon she should ever 
have with them, and went along up beside the 
brook till they reached one of the saw-mills; and 
then Thomas and Larry went off to the pool 
above, and Jane sat down on the bank with her 
knitting, and with the rest of them about her. 

It was early September; and up in that hill- 
country many a maple-bough had ripened in the 
sun and wind, and Lucia’s hands were full of 
fringed gentians. “ They are just the color of 
your eyes, Marnie,” she said. 

“They are just the color of Louisina’s,” said 
little Kate, And at that moment Jo, coming 


A LOST JEWEL 


139 


pantingly up behind — for they had gone off with¬ 
out waiting for him to finish setting his trap — 
snatched Louisina, and sent her flying, flying, 
flying, and falling, into the stream where the dam 
had made a broad back-water in which a boom of 
logs was chained. “ Oh, Jo, Jo ! ” cried Lucia. 

“ Oh, my Louisina ! ” shrieked Rose frantically. 

“See her swim ! ” chuckled Jo. 

And little Kate threw herself flat upon the 
ground, and kicked, and kicked, and set up a wail 
that might have been heard where the doll came 
from ; and in another second Marnie had sprung 
from the bank to one of the logs, and from that 
log to another, and was skipping from log to log, 
each one rolling over under her as she touched it, 
running to catch the doll before it could be swept 
into the mill-race and go over the dam to rise no 
more. Perfectly reckless now, Lucia sprang after 
her; every log spun round, gave a great swirl and 
dipped down into the water, the moment it felt 
her foot; there was no time to stay on one and 
gather herself for a jump to the next — she must 
pass from one key to another just as the fingers fly 
from one key to another in playing scales on the 


140 A LOST JEWEL 

piano. She saw Marnie skipping like a bird from 
this log to that, but she was so dizzy with the 
dizzy logs herself that she thought she should 
drop off; if she delayed a moment on one, that 
would be the end of her; she had to clinch her 
little fists and do just what she saw Marnie do. 
One swift, frightened glance behind showed Rose 
following, and Jane clucking up and down the 
bank, having grabbed little Kate by the shoulder, 
putting one in mind of a hen with her ducklings 
in the water. A man from the mill, with a long 
hook in his hand, ran down the inclined plane up 
which the logs were drawn to be sawed, and 
snatched the doll on his hook, and caught Lucia 
reeling from log to log, just ready to drop in, and 
in two minutes she was on the opposite side, 
where Marnie waited for her and Rose joined 
her. The dripping Louisina had, after that, to be 
brought to life, and her clothes hung up to dry, 
and a great deal of remark had to be bestowed on 
Jo, who was now inside the saw-mill, riding up to 
the saw on one of the long logs and jumping off 
just in time not to be sawed in two. And of 
courge as soon as they knew it they all had to do 


A LOST JEWEL 


141 

the same thing; and Jane had run to call Thomas 
to the rescue, and then, still clutching the shoul¬ 
der of little Kate, who was still vocal, she had 
made for home as fast as she could travel, to tell 
their mother that there wouldn’t be a child alive 
in half an hour. 

Knowing the time was short, the naughty little 
creatures determined to make the most of it, for 
they would probably be forbidden ever to come to 
the saw-mills again. When Thomas arrived upon 
the scene with the virtuous Larry, he found 
Marnie, with her shoes and stockings off and her 
skirts tucked up about her, riding on a newly- 
sawed board that was shooting down the sluice, 
followed by Lucia on another, and Rose on a 
third, each catching hold of the side of the sluice- 
box in time to scramble off her board and run 
back to secure another, each wet to the waist, but 
all feeling that they were in for it now and filling 
the air with cries and laughter. It was too much 
for Larry. While Thomas was plucking the girls 
off their boards, he had seized a board of his own 
and was riding away in glory; and before Thomas 
could snatch him into safety, Marnie and Lucia 


142 


A LOST JEWEL 


were in the sluice again riding by triumphantly, 
when all at once they were stilled by a sound that 
sent dismay to their hearts — the voice of grand¬ 
mother. 

“ I don’t know that it will do you any harm,” 
said grandmother, arriving on the scene, “ to ride 
in the sluice, although it has its dangers. I used 
to do it myself. But it will do you harm to stay 
in your wet clothes another moment. So you run 
home now as fast as you can clip it, or I shall 
warm your little legs with this switch, every 
one! ” 

And they ran home in front of grandmother as 
fast as they could clip it, and had hot ginger-tea 
to drink, and were every one tucked into bed in 
broad daylight. 

“ I don’t care if we are put to bed before tea,” 
said Marnie. “I’m tired anyhow — and oh, hasn’t 
it been just a perfectly splendid time!” And 
Lucia felt as if perhaps she should never have 
another chance to be naughty again, and answered 
with a sigh of satisfaction, that it had, and felt 
not a bit of repentance in her still reckless mood, 
until mamma, who had been driving with papa in 


A LOST JEWEL 


143 


the afternoon — papa having come earlier in the 
week than usual — had to be up half the night 
with her and Rose, both of them keeping every- ► 
body awake with croupy coughs. 

“ Oh, I felt as if I didn’t care whether I was 
good or bad, and I just meant to have a good 
time,” sighed Lucia. 

“You see,” said mamma, setting down the bot¬ 
tle and spoon, “ it is impossible for one to do 
wrong without hurting somebody else. And 
when we know that it grieves our Heavenly 
Father for us to do wrong, who would really be 
willing to grieve Him ? And what a thing it is for 
a child that has so much happiness herself, to 
make sadness in heaven ” — 

“ O mamma, mamma, you don’t know what a 
thing it is to have to go away from you!” cried 
Lucia. 

“ But I am in hopes you will be good, whether 
you are on this side of the Atlantic or the other.” 

“I’ll try, mamma,” she sobbed and coughed, 

“ I’ll try for your sake, mamma, I’ll try.” 

“ Not for my sake at all, my darling,” said 
mamma; “for His sake who takes care of you in 


144 


A LOST JEWEL 


life and in death, and in whose eyes you want to 
make your soul white and lovely.” And then she 
took a little book and read Lucia the Twenty- 
third Psalm, and bade her good-night again, wait¬ 
ing till morning to deal with Marnie for leading 
Rose into mischief, and relegating Jo and Larry 
to their father. 

“I don’t care,” said Jo, afterwards, “I’d rather 
have papa’s switch than one of mamma’s talks. 
The switch only makes you mad, but she makes 
a fellow feel mean, all over. It’s hateful to feel 
mean ; and when you have to have them both — 
Say, Rose, I’m real sorry about Louisina, and I’ll 
save all my pocket-money to buy another.” 

“ It won’t be Louisina,” cried Rose, with a burst 
of fresh sorrow at the thought, “ if you do. We’ve 
been through so much together, and now her 
beautiful eyes are gone.” 

“ I shouldn’t wonder but Larry could make 
them right again,” said grandmother, coming 
along. “ He can do almost anything.” 

“ Larry isn’t a white hen’s chicken,” said Jo, 
“oh, no, not at all, by no means! ” 


A LOST JEWEL 


145 


CHAPTER XIII. 

“ Lucia, Lucia! ” cried Marnie, running into 
their room next morning, for Lucia had been 
made to have her breakfast in bed, and had just 
taken her bath, “ oh, what do you think ? Mamma 
has lost the splendid stone out of her ring.” 

“ She has ? ” 

“ And she feels dreadfully about it — and every¬ 
body’s looking everywhere.” 

“ Of course she does ! ” 

Lucia hurried with her clothes, almost forgetting 
her old tribulation in the new one. “ It’s no use 
my looking,” she said. “ I never found anything, 
you know. But I shall look just the same.” She 
was a trifle near-sighted perhaps, and sometimes so 
absent-minded that she saw a thing quite plainly 
and forgot that was what she was looking for. 
“Oh, dear!” sighed Lucia. “There are so many 
things to worry mamma.” 


146 


A LOST JEWEL 


“And she says all the stones of Golconda 
couldn’t replace that one.” 

“ Of course they couldn’t; papa gave it to her. 
I remember the day — don’t you ? Oh, how long 
I have been here, how happy I have been ! ” 

“ I should think you were going away, to hear 
you talk.” 

“ Well,” said Lucia, abruptly changing the con¬ 
versation at that, “ I wonder where she lost it.” 

“ She thought she dropped it in the work- 
basket. But it isn’t there. And she may have 
dropped it in the hen-house. But that has been 
swept. And the Witch of Endor’s mate may 
have hidden it with all his scraps, you know, and 
the big Brahma may have swallowed it — grand¬ 
mother says she’ll have every one of their crops 
opened,” said Marnie. “And—I don’t believe 
anybody’s stolen it, do you ? Here, I’ll button 
your dress.” 

“Why, who could steal it ?” said Lucia. 

“ I guess grandmother thinks somebody has, by 
the way she’s nodding her head, and — Did mamma 
say anything to you about yesterday afternoon ? ” 
asked Marnie with a sudden thought. “ It seems 


A LOST JEWEL 


147 


as if I heard her in the night, but I was so sleepy 
I wasn’t sure. She talked to me this morning till 
I almost cried, I can tell you. She said it was 
wicked to risk one’s life for pleasure, and selfish 
to forget other people’s sorrow, and she said I 
might have been the means of drowning all three 
of you. But then you needn’t have come.” 

“ But if we don’t set a bad example, then nobody 
can follow it,” said Lucia. “ And I’m going to 
try to act always as ii mamma was looking at 
me.” 

“Well, come along now, and let’s hunt for the 
stone. It’ll be gay, this forenoon, all hunting 
together. What if Argus has bolted it for a gravel 
stone ? Do you suppose grandmother ” — 

“Do you know,” said Lucia, pursuing her own 
thoughts, as she sat down to lace her boots, “ it 
must be right, or mamma wouldn’t do it — but it 
seems queer for some people to keep things that 
are worth so much money, when they know of 
other people who need the money.” 

“ If we didn’t,” said Marnie, “we shouldn’t have 
anything — silk dresses — pictures — pianos ” — 

“ Some people,” said Lucia, “ need concerts and 


148 


A LOST JEWEL 


pictures, though, I suppose, as much as other 
people need bread and meat.” 

“ I suppose they do,” said Marnie. “ I would 
rather hear a beautiful song than have a handful 
of grandmother’s caramels, anyway. And then, 
sometimes, things are keepsakes. If papa gives 
us the pearl rings he promised when we can do 
our sewing perfectly, you wouldn’t want to sell 
yours and give it to the poor ? ” 

“ Oh, no, no,” said Lucia. “ It would seem like 
selling — selling his love, you know. But I should 
think, I really should, ever so many times, that 
what it cost might almost have sent poor Catarina 
back to Italy.” And then they were dancing 
down-stairs and joining the general scramble, and 
assuring Mrs. Maurice that they would find her 
precious stone if it was to be found. And the 
noonday meal had come before they dreamed of it, 
and mamma had told Lucia it was of no use for 
her to tire herself, and to sit down in the hammock 
with her book. 

After a while, Lucia grew weary of not being a 
part of all the pleasant hubbub, and went up on 
the piazza. “ Lucia,” said grandmother, coming 


A LOST JEWEL 


149 


out of the house, just then, and stopping in front 
of her to draw her spectacle-case from her deep 
pocket, and, feeling, possibly, that if Lucia were 
going away, the more moral lessons she had before 
she went, the better; “ Lucia, are you sure you 
know nothing about this stone ? ” 

“Grandmother!” exclaimed Lucia, drawing 
herself up like a little insulted princess. 

“ Dear me, child ! ” said grandmother. “ You 
look like the Witch of Endor! But you have 
been heard to say that if you had the money it 
cost you would send Catarina ” — 

“ And so I would ! ” cried Lucia. “ And so,” 
she added more calmly, “I suppose, would you.” 

“You are right, Lucia,” said grandmother. 
“ Ever since I have thought you were trying to 
be docile, I have been thinking that I should find 
Catarina and send her home for you. I am sorry 
that I didn’t understand her that day she defied 
me so — I suppose that was Catarina. But now 
there’s no need of it. Well, well, it’s just as I say. 
‘Who goes by the road of By-and-By arrives at 
the house of Never.’ Ah, there’s the Whitneys,” 
as a carriage-full of callers from one of the hotels 
drew up at the gate. 


A LOST JEWEL 


150 

As Lucia saw Mrs. Maurice receiving the callers 
on the grass-plot, and seating them in the rustic 
chairs there, she thought it likely that mamma 
was on tenterhooks, as grandmother’s phrase was, 
about her stone yet — the beautiful stone that 
Lucia had so often seen strike sparks of all the 
colors of the rainbow. By and by the callers went, 
and some others came, and then they, too, were 
gone, and Mr. Maurice and his wife were just 
starting on the search again, when another car¬ 
riage drove up to the gate and stopped. “ Some 
more callers,” thought Lucia. “That stone will 
never be found at this rate.” 

A gentleman opened the door of the carriage 
and stopped a moment to look about him. He 
glanced at the deep blue of the sky where a single 
white cloud rested on the summit of Benbow, 
below which many a reddening bough hung out 
like torches that one might take to light the way 
through the dark wood where Lucia had been lost. 
He saw Lady Thornton, with her sons and daugh¬ 
ters almost as large a*s herself, spread her wings 
and go scudding like another white cloud over the 
hill meadow. He smiled as Argus sounded his 


A LOST JEWEL 


151 

trumpet, mocked ineffectually by two little ravens 
in the syringa-bush at the gate. He lifted his hat 
and bowed low, as he caught sight of Mr. Maurice 
and his wife; and then his eye wandered quickly 
over a group of children down one of the garden- 
paths, and came back and rested on another on 
the upper step of the piazza. For Lucia had been 
sitting on the piazza, all this time, trying to make 
a drawing of mamma, and thinking that, with all 
the different photographs in the case which mamma 
had given her, she never should see her plainly 
enough when she was gone away from her. 

Then the gentleman turned and helped a lady 
out of the carriage ; Lucia, sitting on the top step, 
saw them. The lady’s dress caught — there was 
some one else in the carriage, an old person, who 
helped her disengage it. 

As the lady lingered that instant on the step of 
the carriage, the sun fell full upon her face. How 
radiantly beautiful it was ! There was not a ves¬ 
tige of color on the smooth skin; the features 
might have been cut in fresh ivory; the eyes 
were large and dark—how large and dark! the 
full lips were red as reddest roses are, and the 


152 A LOST JEWEL 

black hair fell in loose thick curls about the snowy 
throat. 

For a moment this lady looked anxiously about 
her, for both Mr. and Mrs. Maurice stood aside 
and left the path clear; and then her eyes fell 
on Lucia, and a smile broke over her face, an 
irradiating smile, a smile like nothing else than 
sunshine. “ Preciosa! ” she cried in a voice of 
breaking music, “ Preciosa ! ” and held out her 
arms. 

Lucia, looking up from her paper, saw her, and 
sat still, fascinated, to gaze. She saw the gentle¬ 
man, too, and remembered afterwards, saying to 
herself, “ He has the bright eyes, but he has not 
the star on his breast,” as if she were in a dream, 
although at the time she was not conscious of a 
thought. But as those arms were opened to her, 
and that voice, like a sunbeam piercing the mist, 
called, “Preciosa! Preciosa!” a cloud seemed to 
clear away from her brain as she had seen the 
morning strip a cloud from the top of old 
Benbow. 

“ Preciosa ! ” That was her name. Not Lucia. 
It was Beppo called her Lucia. All this whirled 


A LOST JEWEL 


153 


through her mind. And that voice — she could 
recall it singing and speaking in all sorts of varied 
sweetness. And that face — she had seen it bent 
over her in a hundred different ways. Then, with 
one wild shriek, she had bounded down the path, 
and was in the arms of her own father and 
mother. 

And in a moment Mr. and Mrs. Maurice had 
come down, too; and the new mother’s arms were 
about Mrs. Maurice, and everybody was crying — 
how could they help it ? And Lucia was clinging 
to the own mother’s gown in a glad, shy, tender 
way, all the old love rushing across her and well¬ 
ing up from her overflowing heart, and she kissed 
her mother’s gown, and caught her hands, and 
held them to her eyes, her mouth, her heart, and 
laid her cheek upon them, and turned to Mrs. 
Maurice to throw an arm about her, also, and 
draw all three together, and sprang and nestled 
in her father’s breast, and burst out crying herself 
in the fulness of her love and joy and sorrow 
all in one. 

“ O mamma! ” she exclaimed, “ I shall not have 
to choose, I shall go with my own father and 


54 


A LOST JEWEL 


mother. But I love you, I love you and papa just 
the same! ” And then she saw an old woman, 
who had left the carriage last, standing in the path 
with her cloak wrapped proudly about her, and she 
flew to Catarina. 

And presently Catarina turned to grandmother, 
who had joined the group, and smiled with all her 
glittering teeth again, and with that lifting of the 
eyebrows that showed so much of the white of 
the eyes that it looked as if they lightened, and 
made the remark she had made before, tapping 
Lucia’s head emphatically, “ I vittoriosa ! ” 

“Dear me!” said grandmother, “if that’s what 
you meant, there’s nobody better pleased than I 
with your vittoriosa business. The shortest way 
home is the longest way round ; if you had only 
come to me, honest fashion, and trusted me as 
one old woman ought to trust another, I’d have 
helped you then.” 

But, by this, the children had flocked to the 
spot, full of curiosity and pleasure that in two 
minutes died into astonished silence, and then 
broke into an outcry of rage and grief. “ Lose 
Lucia ? Lucia going ? Oh, what have we done ? 


A LOST JEWEL 


155 


Oh, what shall we do ? ” came in one chorus. 
And Marnie had to run for the house to hide 
herself in the darkest corner, and Lucia had to 
follow her, overtaking her on the piazza and cling¬ 
ing to her there; and it took all the efforts of 
everybody else to soothe the others in any degree. 

“ What does she want another father and mother 
for?” blubbered Jo, behind his jacket sleeve. 
“ Aren’t ours good enough for her ? ” 

“ They’re just as bad as the people who took her 
in the first place ! They are taking her away 
from us ! ” wept Rose. 

And little Kate, lifting up her voice, added, 
“ She’s my favorite sister ! She doesn’t let Rose 
imperpose upon me. I don’t know how to do 
without her ! ” 

“ And how do we know she’s going to be happy 
over there?” cried Jo. And then the beautiful 
new mother bent over him, her fragrant curls 
touching his cheek. “ Don’t you think I make my 
little girl happy ? ” she said. “ They do love her,” 
added Lucia’s mother in her pretty broken Eng¬ 
lish, turning to Mrs. Maurice again. “And it is 
not wonder. She so lovaly. She change — five 


156 


A LOST JEWEL 


years make much change, but she still my Preciosa, 
mia carissima ! ” And she showed the little ivory 
painting that she wore, the picture of a plump and 
laughing child, without the wistful look in the 
eyes, the child that Lucia must have been before 
her years of trouble. 

“ Well, you’ve got nobody but yourself to thank 
for it, Jo,” said grandmother. “If you hadn’t 
chattered that morning to this old woman on the 
road, she might never have been certain enough to 
have sent for Lucia’s father and mother. She’ll 
always be Lucia to us, for all their Preciosa. A 
good day’s work, Jo, if you don’t think so.” And 
Jo’s grief was somewhat arrested by the thought 
that he had played an important part in the 
matter. 

“ I think,” said Mr. Maurice to Lucia’s father, 
“ that the only thing for you to do is that which I 
suggested in my letter — send for your trunks, 
and stay here as long as we stay. And in that 
time Lucia’s — or must I say Preciosa’s ? — attach¬ 
ment to yourselves, through her growing famil¬ 
iarity, will strengthen without so much pain in 
parting the ties she has formed among us here.” 


A LOST JEWEL 


157 


“It will be best for all,” said Lucia’s father, 
feeling that in Mr. Maurice’s situation he should 
offer the same hospitality. And to pacify the 
inconsolable children, it was promised, before 
they went into the house, that every other summer 
Lucia and her father and mother should come 
back to old Benbow; and it was afterwards 
arranged, on Lucia’s wish, that Marnie should go 
to them in Italy when it became time for her to 
attend to her music more seriously, and that Larry 
should be one of the family if ever he went over 
to study sculpture. 

“And me?” sobbed Jo. “Nobody says any¬ 
thing about me! I shall go over some time and 
steal her back again ! See if I don’t! ” 

“Not a doubt of it,” said grandmother. “If 
there’s any mischief to do, you’ll do it, Jo.” 

“Oh ! ” cried the impetuous mother, as she turned 
again to Mrs. Maurice. “ But you are people of 
heaven, to have taken my child from the street 
and to make her yours.” 

“ And all yours are ours ! and always will be ! ” 
said her husband, supporting her. 

“ It broke the heart to me once with grief,” said 


( 

158 A LOST JEWEL 

the mother. “ And now it breaks the heart to me 
again with joy ! ” 

It was exactly at that moment that grand¬ 
mother, able to endure no more, put her hand into 
her capacious pocket for her handkerchief, which, 
of course, had to be rooted up from underneath 
her purse and her diary and her spectacle-case and 
her knife and her keys and her shears and Jo’s ball 
and Larry’s drawing-pad, and all the rest; and 
she drew it out with an impatient flirt before 
applying it to her eyes. As she did so, there was 
a flash of light, a flash of all the prismatic colors, 
a dazzle in one’s face, and something fell at her 
feet, and lay there shining up at her like an 
eye. 

It was the missing stone. 

And it had come out of grandmother’s pocket. 

“ Grandmother ! ” cried Lucia severely. 

“ If that doesn’t beat the Dutch ! ” cried grand¬ 
mother, stopping with her handkerchief in mid-air 
and a great tear tumbling down her face. “ It’s 
that ridiculous bird again ! I ought to have his 
neck wrung. He fished it out of the work- 
basket yesterday afternoon, I’ll be bound, and 


A LOST JEWEL 159 

dropped it in my pocket when he was snuggling 
there.” 

“ Glad it wasn’t mine ! ” muttered Jo. 

And the Witch of Endor’s mate hopped from 
the syringa-bush to her shoulder, peered round 
into her face, and cried, “ Hooroah ! ” 


. 




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